


Tesselate; Bokeru

by hitchhikingbabeh



Series: Tessellate; Bokeru [1]
Category: K-pop, SHINee
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2020-05-12 11:30:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 42,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19228279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitchhikingbabeh/pseuds/hitchhikingbabeh
Summary: trigger warnings: strong language, suggestive content, sexual content, drug use, death. mentions of: abuse, suicide, depression, anxiety, mental illness, violence. also, a lot of fluff in between. please do not take these warnings lightly. if you are affected by any of these elements, please read at your own risk.





	1. Tessellate

>[ _t_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DUy-wkyymY1Q&t=ZGU5YzE1MzRjNDI2ZWRlY2ZjYjIyNTJhZTFjMGVhYjgyZWQ1MzZjMCxaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1) _ime to slip you on my tongue_

_i am so fucking drunk im sorry i forgot about the library thing i love you do you still love me_

_kibum, it’s 9pm on a thursday_

_#thirstythursday bitchhh_

_where the fuck are you anyway?_

_sigma mu house_

_i came to pick up and my big wants to get us wrekt come over hes ur type_

_also pls tell boyfriend to come home before my taken ass gets seduced by choi kermit_

 

And here you thought Kibum having pledged to Sigma Mu was going to do him good. It’s all he ever talked about when you met him last semester, and you thought the frat fever might settle by now; it’s been almost six months since he was officially admitted. 

But nope.

You look up from your phone to a very passed out Kim Jonghyun and you sigh. He’d actually been really good about studying for midterms today, since it was one of the rare days where the library was actually chill enough to feel comfortable in. 

“Jjong.”

“Mm?”

“Key’s drunk.”

He stirs but doesn’t open his eyes. “When isn’t he?”

“He says he’ll suck Minho off if you’re not home in ten.” 

You just sit there with your arms crossed over your chest as you watch him jolt up and grab his laptop and the handouts he’d printed an hour ago. He doesn’t say a word to you before he rushes off and away from your little studying cocoon, and you don’t expect him to because this is not the first time this has happened. It will not be the last, either. 

Jonghyun is a year above Kibum and two above you, and also a Sigma Mu brother. As such, he is more than responsible for the younger male and his reckless ass, which you thought would calm the fuck down now that he’s a sophomore. 

But as usual, you’re wrong. Kibum is just full of surprises like that. 

After the cloud of dust Jonghyun leaves in the wake of his haste finally dissipates, you decide you should head home, too. Taemin also picked up tonight and you don’t think he’s up to much and you actually want to smoke a bit before passing out yourself—   

Oh, wait. He’s pledging this semester. 

Yay.

 

>[ _k_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dvxc1ufJxPGM&t=YWZmMmYzMmVkYWFkMjgxOTljNDlkNjkyYmU1NWVlMDlhY2QwZTcwYixaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1) _ing but you met your first queen_

Shim Changmin warned you about Sigma Mu boys, mostly because he was one himself. He used to be your neighbour, and he was your first crush, too. Changmin was your only reliable tutor while you were in high school and the guy you still kind of think is the ideal man. He’s half the reason why you attend this school and why you don’t mind that every other male you know at this goddamn college joined the frat. 

You’re actually curious whether or not Taemin will get in, you actually want to know who Kibum’s big is because you’ve avoided the whole subject of frat boy culture with him for way too long. You first met Key at orientation, when he was a messy strawberry blond with too many girls (and a few boys) at his tail that worked with the Student Council to welcome incoming freshmen. He actually didn’t believe you were a freshman the first month of school, because you didn’t act like one. 

You don’t know how he thinks freshmen act, because within the first two weeks of school you blacked out at a nearby school’s toga party, puked on the subway and fell asleep on a bathroom while at a Quidditch party. All in one night. 

Yup. Your school plays Quidditch. And their post-game parties have a lot of bad booze; it’s a really good place to make bad choices. And boy, did you make them. With and without Kibum, with and without Taemin. 

All in all, you’re not surprised to find yourself wanting to dress up to go to the Sigma Mu house, because it’s the classiest of the frats and everyone who belongs to it is notoriously hot. 

Jonghyun was actually the only pledge accepted of his class, and Key, Minho and Jung Jinwoon of theirs. And it’s not surprising at all, because Jonghyun has the sharpest, most beautiful bone structure you’ve ever come across and if Minho wasn’t a complete film geek, he’d be a haute couture runway model. Kibum is at the same level, except with the kind of cash and style that puts Hollywood to shame. You don’t doubt that Taemin will, too, get in, what with his ridiculous fairy prince good looks and his general no-stress, no-fucks-given attitude. 

He’s also the new poster boy of the Performing and Media Arts department, very much like your other three friends had been at some point. 

In a way, you’re a poster girl for the PMA department, too, with the over-achiever status you gained when you claimed a double major in Production and Sound Design and started taking up spotlights at open mics.

You might even audition for some theatre tropes next year.  

Oh, yeah, you also DJ for the college radio with Jonghyun five nights a week from midnight to 2am. 

Your last midterm is on Monday and yet here you are, standing alone in your dorm room (because Taemin is surely at the Sigma Mu house already, that asshole) changing out of your dark jeans and tee to a wine red swing dress.

When you catch yourself, you’re smearing deep red on your lips, and you have a full face of makeup on. You’re also wearing a black velvet choker. An argument could be made about whether or not you’re overdressed, but there’s no such thing as that when it comes to Sigma Mu parties. Walking into that house is like going to NYFW, after all. Maybe you’ll wear those new black ankle boots Kibum got you for your birthday and really push for the young vixen look. 

Damn, you wish you were single. 

 

You live in the dorms building that’s closest to all the frat houses, so your trek over to Sigma Mu is quick. Good thing, too, because it’s cold as balls, and when you look up to the house’s entrance you’re actually glad to see that the house looks crowded as fuck. 

There’s no point in expecting any Sigma Mu event to be chill.

The first face you see upon entering is Krystal Jung’s, and you’re as happy to see her as she is to see you. It’s not very often that you see the young beauty smile, and just the sight of her gorgeously crinkled eyes makes your heart skip a beat. 

“Where are they?”

“Smoking in the yard. Let’s go, Jongin is already super fucking drunk and I gotta get him home,” she says, taking your hand and starting to slither between the bodies crowding the entryway. 

“How are they already fucked up? Is today important?”

“Yeah. They announced the new brothers. Taemin got in,” she meets your eyes and smiles, giving your hand a squeeze, “Minho’s his big. Jongin got in, too, Jonghyun’s his big. And Kim Wonshik and Shin Hoseok got in, too,” she laughs fully and the sight and sound is beautiful; Krystal is beautiful and you wish she was your roommate and not Taemin. “I think they only just found out, though. So they’re all having a celebratory joint out back. I might just smoke, too, prep for college is killing me.”

Maybe it’s because of how intimidatingly pretty Krystal is that you so effortlessly get to the frat house’s backyard in less than ten minutes, the way the swarms of people step out of the way to let you through. Even more surprising is the fact that there are only five people out here apart from yourself and the gorgeous tall brunette pulling you by the hand.  

Who swiftly lets you go upon catching the eyes of a very baked Kim Jongin. 

You’re actually quite glad to encounter the bitter smell of weed in this damp winter air, it mixes really well with your mood, the way Taemin’s dark hair flows in the night breeze, the way Kibum looks up at the sky with his back turned to you, the way Jonghyun has his arm around the younger’s waist. 

“Where do you get off blazing without me, bitches?”

All three boys turn around at the sound of your voice, and they take note of Jongin hugging the wits out of Krystal, they take you in, and they smile. 

Only then do you spot the stranger in this little crowd, and you can do little else but grin. 

Kibum is a lot of things. Annoying, arrogant, prissy and messy and has a really low tolerance for someone with his attitude. 

But he has an eye for people that very few share. 

This guy is adorkably beautiful and you feel really guilty about the way you eye him, half patronising and half impressed. He’s wearing leather and ripped jeans and you think it fits and doesn’t fit him, because the sweater he’s wearing under his jacket is woolly and awfully cuddly for the sharpness of his eyes, the wintery look in them.

This must be Kibum’s big. 

“Why did you change?” Jonghyun is always a bit confused by how well you clean up, you looked a hot mess less than an hour ago and he actually minds. 

“Because none of you did, obviously,” you avoid the new face and the new pair of eyes, which have been watching you since you stepped out here. 

Your words hurt Kibum, who always looks flawless and sports black denim and a designer pressed shirt under his Moncler today. “Excuse you,” he scoffs, but then he gets a better look at you and smirks, “I like your lipstick.”

You spare him a smile and his own warms up, and his hands land on the stranger’s shoulders. “Big hyung, this is my ultimate hoe-dude. Platonic girlfriend, my ultimate biffle. Ultimate hoe-dude, apple of my eye, this is my big hyung, the bestest big that ever was. If it wasn’t for him, I swear I’d make more sense right now. I love him.” 

“Nice to meet you, Big Hyung,” and you add your actual name because Kibum is an idiot when he’s crossfaded. “I heard you were out to get people wrecked and couldn’t resist hopping over.” 

The way he scans you isn’t unsettling, and you don’t mind the way his narrow face looks you up and down. He’s the most intriguing fusion of dreamy and quirky, the entirety of his face made up of oddly appealing triangles, from the right ones of his eyes to the acute shape of his mouth. It kind of makes that dazzling smile he’s giving you look like the perfect Dorito. If Doritos were raspberry red at the edges and pearly white in between, that is. 

You were never all that good at geometry but it’s hard not to think about it when even his nose is reminiscent of the shape.

For a hot minute it feels like you’re high already. 

“Lee Jinki,” he tells you, and when he raises a hand to wave at you, you realise that the fog trailing from his lips is from the cigarette he holds between his index and middle fingers. Maybe it might be the breeze that filters in with the deep sound of his voice but your skin starts to crawl and it makes you smile wide. “What kind of big doesn’t get his little and his ultimate hoe-dude fucked up?”

He raises a fresh joint in your direction just as Taemin goes over to shotgun the last of the one he’s holding to Jongin, and his eyes are actually sparkling. “Want the first hit?” 

The moment you walk over to stand next to him, you know tonight is going to be a complete trainwreck. 

And for once, you’re actually excited about it. 

 

_>_ [ _a_ ](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dfm4Tr9Sy6pk&t=OTIxNzhmYThiNWRhYzRmOGYwODBkNjMzNGNhYTliZTYzYTFkYmU2MyxaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1) _re you the brutal heart that i’ve been looking for?_

Usually, Lee Jinki hosts these parties as an excuse to get fucking smashed. He’ll start the night off with a few bottles of soju after a light dinner, and things will escalate to shots of vodka and bad tequila until he blacks out and Jonghyun puts him to bed. 

Though not before he’s wrestled at least one Sigma Mu pledge to the ground, eaten a third of his weight in pizza or fried chicken and made sure that every single one of his core squad members have drunk enough water, eaten enough food and rolled enough joints to keep shit going when he passes out. 

Tonight, though… things feel different. 

At least part of it is because he’s finally gotten a glimpse of that freshman Kibum never stops texting or talking about or ditching big-little bonding brodates for. He’s usually good about new people, but your vibe is vague and it gives him just the tiniest bit of anxiety mixed with an odd kind of thrill. But also because he’s a senior now, because he’s interning at the city’s Opera House and also at the biggest talent agency in town, because he’s not all that young anymore and it’s been getting harder to avoid the subject of his future as a professional. 

All of this should be plenty good reason to get white girl wasted any chance he can get, but tonight has him feeling self-conscious and surprisingly aware of his every move. 

Why the fuck does he want to impress a freshman, anyway?

He doesn’t know where it came from, the cringey smartass lines he was throwing out in the yard, why he offered you the first hit of a joint he rolled (because he usually saves that honour for himself), why Kibum’s nickname for you actually slipped off his lips like it was the most normal thing in the world. 

Because you’re quite honestly the opposite of the most normal thing in the world. 

It’s hard to pin your age to you right now, sitting in this mess of a living room as the party starts to scatter so only frat members and their squads remain. You’d all sat in a circle to play  _Never Have I Ever_ , and surprisingly enough, it’s only after one more joint and a few more drinks have gone around that things start to get really interesting. 

Maybe because he’s already starting to feel properly fucked up. 

He’s sat next to you on the floor, right in front of the couch. Taemin sits above you on the soft leather furniture, his legs on either side of your shoulders, while Minho sits cross-legged next to Taemin, almost entirely passed out. His eyes are duly tired from the smoke he’s been hotboxed with combined with the glare of his phone screen as he texts that one other sophomore everyone knows he’s completely in love with, and no one feels cruel enough to make too loud noises to rouse him. 

“Never have I ever…” Jongin starts out from across the circle. Jinki raises his eyes from the joint between his fingers and catches you biting the corner of your lower lip from the corner of his eye, the red on them still perfectly uniform. It’s amazing and confusing, how your tongue swipes where your teeth had been and your lipstick doesn’t move, nor does it stain your pearly whites. It occupies much more brain space than it should and makes it hard for him to register anything else while this drunk and this high.

“Kissed more than one person sitting in this circle.”

Jinki only glances down at your shotful of tequila as he lowers his head to his own, because he’s sure everyone else in this circle will have to drink as well. 

He doesn’t expect it when you do it, though. 

“Never have I ever kissed more than two people sitting in this circle!” Jonghyun follows instantly, and he snorts as he watches Kibum down another shot, and Jinki, and Taemin… and you. 

“More than three people!” Kibum laughs with kindling thrill, and he cackles when he sees you squint your eyes a bit before you meet Krystal’s and you both burst out laughing. 

But a third shot goes down your throat, and your eyes fall to the wooden floors of the frat house, almost watery. 

“You know, I always knew our friend group would eventually get to a place where everyone has hooked up with everyone else at some point,” Kibum adds, but you’re not brave enough to meet his eyes right now for fear of questioning in front of people you don’t yet consider friends. “But our youngest two are already pretty far in the game.”

“Let us  _live_ ,” Taemin whines, and you only notice he’s also downed three shots when you rest your head back to look up at him, “can me and my roommate go through our last night as roommates without getting shamed?” 

“You live together?”

All heads turn to Jinki because he’s been awfully quiet tonight, throwing in a cackle here and there and nothing else. 

“My old roommate transferred out last semester,” you supply, and it’s amazing how level you sound, it’s such a contrast to how hazy your eyes are when they’re on Taemin, when they fall on his own. “So he snuck in on the first day of this one.” 

“Are we ready to admit that you’re fucking now?” Krystal’s words are so out of place, too sharp for her soft features and it makes you blush as you look up to exchange another look with Taemin. 

And then you burst out laughing. 

“Well? Are you?”

“C’mon, Taemin, you shouldn’t lie to your frat bros.”

“Look at him giggling, of course they’re fucking.”

“Oh my, would you look at the time~” Taemin sounds super woozy when he’s high and you love it because it’s hilarious, even more so when glances down at his bare wrist and starts to stretch, “it is nigh time for me to get to the nearest coffin, my brethren. Continue to shame one another without my cute little ass.”

Taemin flicks Minho’s ear first, successfully waking him up with a start and a kick to Jinki’s shoulder (“Sorry, hyung,” he says, but Jinki finds it too funny to be offended). Then he ruffles his big’s silver hair before his hands land on your cheeks to make your head rest between his spread thighs. 

Exactly nobody is surprised when Taemin smooches you full on the mouth before chuckling.

“Isn’t this the lipstick I got for you?” he hums, and you nod and let your eyes flutter closed because being this close to Taemin is the most relaxing thing in the world. He’d given you the deep crimson beauty for your birthday, and it’s the first time he’s seen you out with it on. Taemin has always loved you in red. 

“It’s pretty,” he adds, pecking your lips again with his thumb soothing the skin under your cheekbone. He whispers a goodnight into your nearness, and you can feel the stare of at least two pairs of eyes on you once Taemin leans back up, but you give only about a fourth of a fuck and choose not to react. 

You don’t know how to describe your relationship to Taemin. He’s your everything here, your family and your confidant and your worst enemy, too. He knows you inside and out, after spending pretty much every night of last semester at the foot of your bed or in it with you, sleeping, talking or just lying there. Sure, maybe he kisses you every now and then, or you kiss him back and let everything get carried away after one too many hits, one too many shots of soju or one too many heart-to-heart talks… but it doesn’t feel anything less than what it is. Something that goes beyond the tug of war, brawling love you have with Kibum, deeper and only a bit more carnal than the ties that bind you to Kim Jonghyun…

You don’t know what to call it, but for now, you think Taemin might be your soulmate.

Then the lithe, fae boy catches Jinki’s glassy eyes, and his intoxicated smile warms, spreads. In seconds he can see the tension in Jinki’s torso, the curiosity in the way he’s turned his entire body towards you and him, how he eyes the pair of you as if your aura will tell him the answers to the questions on his mind; and Taemin can see each and every one of them.

Taemin kissed you twice but there’s absolutely no evidence of it on his mouth, and Jinki briefly considers what would happen if he pressed his thumb against your Cupid’s bow and ran it down just a bit, if it would stain the tips of his fingers and ruin the perfect rim of colour running through the edges of your mouth—  

“Hyung~” he’s giggling again and it’s adorable and takes over all of Jinki’s thoughts, “are you jealous?” 

The boy’s words are slurred and half-whispered, but Jinki still has enough time and good judgement to mask his emotions with one of those sunshine smiles with crinkly eyes and a shake of his head.

Until Taemin’s hands land on the sides of Jinki’s face, too, when the younger bends down to kiss him full on the lips, too.  

All Jinki can think about is how  _pillowy_  Taemin’s lips are and how it’s kind of hilarious, so he’s grinning from ear to ear when the young brunet sits back up, and so is everyone else because  _this kid is really fucking endearing what the fuck_ —  

“There. That makes five.” He says, with a look of triumph and glee on his face that leaves everyone dazed the entire time that Taemin takes to get up, stretch some more before skipping away towards the frat house’s staircase. 

The woozy fairy world miasma is still thick when he sidles over the very staircase to look at Jinki with perfectly guilt-free eyes. 

“I’m stealing your bed again!”

And he’s gone. 

There are precisely seven seconds of silence before the curiosity bubbles enough to spark conversation. 

“Wait… what does he mean, again?” Jonghyun is the first one to break, though he’s still staring at the staircase with a dumb grin. He, and everyone else in the circle, look back to the frat President, who’s honestly too confused to respond immediately. 

It’s because Jinki is the only one in a single room, obviously. It’s your immediate assumption, and probably the right one, and the fact that no one else gets to the same conclusion makes you giggle some more. 

“He’s passed out in my bed every time he’s come to a Sigma Mu party,” the truth is Jinki just remembered, and it’s adorable and probably the reason why he is not flustered at all at the fact that Taemin just kissed him in public. 

It was probably destiny, the fact that Taemin was one of the few pledges the frat took in this year.

“That fucker is dangerous, I’m telling you,” Jongin says, effectively breaking the ambiance to pull out another joint just as Kibum brings out a bottle of white wine. 

But you hum, still in awe, and the sound steals back all of Jinki’s attention. “He’s cute.” 

“Alright, let’s get classy before he comes back and turns this into a scene out of  _Perfume_ , hm?” Kibum pops open the Sauvignon Blanc, which you both stole from his family’s wine cellar last Thanksgiving, and you nod your head along to his words. 

“My girlfriend has seen enough college sin for one night, my gentlemen. And woman,” Jongin stretches and gets up, “we’re going to take the last train back.”

The living room becomes a roar of  _don’t go_ s mixed with heartfelt adieus until the centrefold worthy couple are out the door with a promise for coffee and edibles in the morning.

“Real talk, though, are you two sleeping together?” Minho asks when the mood turns comfortable again, and he looks surprisingly energised after his almost-nap. 

“No, they’re not,” Jonghyun whines quickly, tired of the questioning and thirsty for more wine, because nearly all the booze has been cleaned out between you and Taemin and Jinki.

“How are you so sure?”

“I have a boyfriend,” you say, your voice stronger than it’s been all night, faded smile and starry eyes still in full force. 

“Whatever, I hate him,” Key mutters bitterly before handing you a cupful of white, “you should dump him. Look at all of this fine booty surrounding you. Why are you still tailing after that absentee trash?” 

“Where is all of the fine booty? I can’t see it through your taken ass, or Minho’s taken a— ”

“I’m not taken!”

“As good as, we all know how you really feel about that sophomore that used to live across from Jjong!”

“What about me?” Jonghyun looks offended as hell and it makes you laugh so hard your chest hurts. 

“You know I love you,” you say while wiping tears with the sides of your index fingers, “you’re cute and I love you and you know exactly why I wouldn’t date you.”

He smirks and you cock an eyebrow with a grin of your own, the exchange an entire conversation that you don’t deem appropriate for any of the pairs of ears around you.

“What about me, then?”

Your laughter kicks back in full force as you lean into Jinki’s shoulder. It’s seconds before you press the side of your index finger against your mouth even though you’re still grinning in full. 

“ _Shhh_ ,” you giggle and your skin is so warm Jinki thinks he’s going to break a sweat, “don’t help him!”

“Do help me! Look at how cute you both are, just date each other and leave that shitbag,” Kibum is belligerent and hilarious and everyone is laughing really hard, you should probably stop smoking because everyone in this circle is too high to lie, too high to hide, and you want to put all of your masks back on.

“ _Anyway_ ,” you press on, though only after Minho’s nailed Kibum in the head with a sofa cushion for being blunt enough to make everything awkward, “I’m fine with things as they are.”

“What do you mean absentee, though?” Jinki’s voice is startling again, you can’t get used to how smooth yet sharp it is, and you don’t think you will anytime soon. Maybe it’s the weed or the wine or the aura of the migraine you’re sure is coming for you tomorrow morning from all this, but the entirety of his face looks as if haloed in speckles of gold and his voice is like honey but also like sea salt and you wish you could pass out right now because you don’t know how much more of this you can take. 

“He goes to school abroad,” Key supplies, and all eyes but yours turn to his, “on the other side of the globe, no less.”

“It’s not a big deal,” you’re leaning back against the couch and the smile on your face is nostalgic and a little sad, and everyone notices. “It’s a pretty open arrangement, as you can probably tell. And I don’t mind the distance.”

“Your libido minds,” Kibum snaps and Jonghyun snorts, though he still gives his boyfriend’s shoulder a squeeze to cut that conversation short.

“ _Shhh_ ,” you say yet again, kicking your head back and closing your eyes, “Kim Jonghyun, take over the music.”

The night takes an airier turn as you watch Jonghyun pull out a Spanish guitar and some of his infamous notebooks, and even though you’re exhausted and heightened from the drink and the smoke, you can’t take your eyes off of him. 

Or off of anyone left in this circle, really.

You move to occupy the space Taemin had left behind as Jinki takes Jongin’s previous spot, which lands him next to the white blond tuning his instrument. You know he usually takes the bass, but Jonghyun looks perfect behind any instrument he touches and if it has strings, you can rest assured he will rock anyone’s fucking world. It makes you quite jealous. 

“Mr President,” Jonghyun snickers suddenly, side-eyeing Jinki with mischief, “you should show your softer side and sing with me now that the newbies are gone.”

“Don’t tell me you sing, too,” you don’t mean to galvanise your words, but you guess you can’t help it. Not when Jonghyun, Kibum, Minho and even Taemin have become  _the_  male voices of the PMA department, of the school’s biggest theatre trope, the highest regarded performers of the entire school…

You wonder if you’ve heard of Jinki before and just were never able to put the name to the face. It shouldn’t surprise you, with the way he sounds. He probably has that uncannily clear tenor Jonghyun has mixed with the treacly texture and hint of ocean breeze you’ve been getting from his voice all night… 

“I couldn’t do that in front of an outsider.”

He’s grinning as he says it, looking into your eyes as if challenging you to challenge him, and you can’t say you’re surprised.

“Fine,” you never backed out from a promising duel of disposition, and you’re not about to start now, “I’ll do it.”

Upperclassmen don’t call you a rookie menace for nothing. 

Jonghyun laughs at the coyness in your voice and immediately starts to tie chords together to that one [s](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D8BAaGbB3t0w&t=Y2IyMDI2NjcxODlkZTgzODZlNjY2YTQ3Mjc1ZTUzODAxNWFkZWM5OCxaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1)ong Jinki’s been hearing from the former’s bedroom for weeks now. He had no idea it had words attached to it, though he is not at all surprised at how good they sound as they flow past Jonghyun’s lips through the first refrain.

And he sure as fuck had no idea you would both sound that good as the second verse comes along.

He’s so high and so focused that he can only stare after you as the whole energy in the room changes with the uptempo beats of the refrain when it comes back, till Jonghyun and Kibum are on their feet and you are, too, harmonising and teasing Minho, who’s about to pass out until your energy is too contagious to deny and the tall silver-haired boy joins in, too.

“Let’s go pass out now~” Kibum sings as the song comes to its final chorus, resting his hands on Jonghyun’s shoulders a second before Minho does the same to him, both echoing his words in different complementary harmonies as they trail out of the room.

You’re back on the couch, this time next to the frat President, when the hum of the Spanish guitar can no longer be heard.

“I feel upstaged and threatened,” he says bluntly, and you push his shoulder with your own even though your cheeks feel warm, even though you don’t think your relationship merits this kind of affection. 

“There’s no point in being mysterious, Mr President,” you respond with a small sigh, “I’m biffles with all of your starboys.” 

Jinki raises his wine cupful towards you to toast, and you oblige him just before you both chug whatever’s left in them. Your limbs are numb and your throat is loose, you want to tell this boy so many things but you can’t single out one to start with.

“I think I should head home, too,” you say in the end, because you have all semester for dumb talk with this guy, to figure out what this funky feeling in your chest is, what it means. 

Jinki leans back on the couch and exhales through his nose. He doesn’t want to let on that he’s still tingling all over from the sound of your voice. “Just stay. It’s way too late to be walking around alone.” 

“I have a black belt in Taekwondo.”

“Bullshit.”

“Fine,” you giggle, “but I’m not scared to walk around alone. And I am very adept at using pepper spray.”

“Do you have it on you?”

You sink into the soft leather and try futilely to hide a smile. “I’ll stick to the well-lit bits and keep my phone in hand, okay?”

He doesn’t answer, because he doesn’t trust you with yourself right now and he knows you can tell.

“Let’s check on Taemin before I go,” you perk up, and you realise you’re quite glad to finally know where it is that Taemin disappears to after every Sigma Mu party you attend. And in the off chance that he’s still alive enough, you’d like to drag him home with you. Nobody loves dark roads after 2AM.

But you guess Jinki sees it in you, the fear, and that’s why he’s overly helpful as he guides you around the house to the threshold of his single bedroom (which is about the size of a suite, honestly), where Taemin lies completely knocked out. He’s only taking up a corner of the gigantic bed, too, and you see, or rather,  _feel_  why when you take a step into the room.

“It’s freezing in here,” you whisper, rubbing at your arms as you move to sit by Taemin, who’s curled into his side. Your hand lands on his shoulder to soothe his skin before you look up to see the window above the bed frame open just a crack, then look back down to pull more of the duvet over Taemin’s body. The boy’s out cold, but he huddles and curls a bit into himself when he feels more warmth gather around his body. For a hot second you think you see him shiver, and it makes you smile despite the furious way you pat the covers closer to his frame. 

Jinki doesn’t think you notice the way he stares after you as he goes over the empty side of the bed, he doesn’t think you see the smallest smile that plagues his mouth as he watches you tuck the young boy in. 

“Just stay over,” he insists, already checking off on a big, clean sweater to lend you, “I can take the couch downstairs— ”

“No way,” you interrupt, your eyebrows furrowed as you watch Taemin stir for some more comfort. It almost looks like you’re offended and it makes him smile. “This bed can fit like six people with room to spare. And it’s cold as fuck, you should take all the body heat you can get.”

“Will you stay?”

A pause rises between you, long enough for shy smile to tug at Jinki’s lips. 

“You stay.”

“ _You_  stay.”

“Fine. But you stay, too.”

You look up, and in the split second that your eyes meet, a thousand things change inside you. It feels private, this single moment, even though there are no hushed whispers. Like a secret you don’t mind keeping, a burden you don’t mind carrying, something you’re not afraid to hide from everyone you know. 

He feels familiar, safe. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense how you both burst into giggles at your sappy argument, how you follow him on the tips of your toes as he pulls out a huge jumper and a pair of sweatpants (and you think you’ve seen them on Kibum before) for you to wear. 

Before you strip, though, you pat your face with a bit of concern, and Jinki is once again fascinated with how the colour of your lips hasn’t changed all night. 

“C’mon,” he chuckles, leading you over to his bathroom sink, where an array of skin care products are neatly organised. 

“Wow,” you try to catch his eyes and he doesn’t let you, because he’s not sure if you’ve noticed that he’s blushing. You’ve actually been after this specific line of products for ages, and it’s weird that of all people, he would own them. 

“Kibum,” is all he answers with, and you burst out laughing. “This changed my life, though,” he goes on, and your laughter simmers down as you wait for him to finish. 

“I looked like 10% less attractive before he gave me these.” 

“Oh, really.” 

“I swear, this was the final push for me to get to a solid 9,” you see a bit of Kibum’s snark in the corner of Jinki’s eyes and his lips, but it’s not long before his weird sunshine glow shines through and stains his cheeks with pink. 

There’s no way to tell how much of this is vanity and how much is sarcasm, but you push his shoulder with the tips of your fingers and turn back to the bathroom mirror. 

It’s odd, how he laughs at the way you take your makeup off, and how you laugh at the way his face contorts as he lathers the foamy cleanser on his face, too. 

Because despite the fact that it looks like you’re filming a skincare advert, it doesn’t feel like the first time you’ve done this with him. 

“Hey,” you tell him as you pat some more skincare stuff on before grabbing the spare toothbrush he gave you. “Now that you’ve seen my bare face, you can’t call me an outsider anymore.”

Jinki wonders if he should tell you it’s the last thing he would refer to you as while he watches you brush your teeth, but the look on your face is really funny and really distracting. He wonders if you can tell that he’s being stubborn with his heart, and with his brain, too; if you can see through the faces he’s making while brushing his own teeth that he’s already starting to care carelessly.

You can’t find it in you to give a shit about how many layers of you this boy has seen in the span of a few hours. It’s not at all uncomfortable how he watches as you tuck yourself into the crevices that Taemin’s thin frame has left to be filled, and you can’t believe you’re actually comfortable enough to let yourself get comfy, but… 

This warmth, this happiness… you know it doesn’t belong here, in this room, within these walls. 

Within this person. 

Jinki can never sleep until he sobers up from drink and high, and this is the first time he doesn’t mind having to wait till tiredness creeps back to leaden his eyelids to rest. It’s pretty, how the moonlight filters through his barely open window and shines on you and on Taemin, it’s pretty and should make him feel like he should be where Taemin is, that his hands should be wrapping around your waist like Taemin’s are right this second, but it doesn’t. He doesn’t feel anything other than just peace. 

But he can’t get used to this.

He can’t get used to you.

 

>[ _l_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DayLiAVJ6vTM&t=MjkyMjcxNTVhNjUyNjk0NmViOGYwZDMyNjJlNzNiNzk5MGFlMDczNixaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1) _oving you is not my plan_

The first time you wake up, it’s because it’s cold. And because Taemin is trying to drag you off the bed by the waist. 

Wait, hold on. You’re sitting up, straining your eyes open a fraction to see that Taemin’s buried his face into the nape of your neck and wrapped his arms more tightly around you to stop Minho from dragging  _him_  off the bed. 

“Taem,” you whisper, your voice thick with sleep, and the boy groans and tightens his grip on you. It’s impossible to deal with him when he’s just woken up, and you hope the look on your face when you glance up at Minho is telling enough that he understands. 

But Minho reaches out one of his huge hands to slip it between both of Taemin’s, and with some force, he manages to break the knot they’d tied around your hips. 

What is this? Why is he dragging the poor kid out of bed? The sun’s not even out yet. You mean to ask all of this and much more, but Minho takes the same hand that had tickled your waist to his mouth, a motion to keep quiet. 

“Hazing,” is all he says, and with a grunt and a sharp intake of breath, Taemin is hung over Minho’s shoulders and swiftly carried out of the room. 

It’s one whole minute before you shiver from the morning chill gusting in through the window, till you rub at your arms and reach out to grab more of the duvet and notice that Jinki, too, has left the room. 

Must be a big deal, this hazing thing. Maybe you should go out and investigate. Maybe they’ll hurt Taemin, he’s really fragile and you shouldn’t leave him alone, it wouldn’t be nice… but then again these boys have no ill will. They have some really special views on certain aspects of college life but they love Taemin, everyone loves Taemin… everyone always loves Taemin… 

 

The second time you wake up, the sun is starting to peek through the windows. And it’s even colder than it was before, fuck. But you feel around the bed and you think you sense movement, and you smile because  _yeeesss—_

Taemin’s back, he’s climbing into bed for more sleep but you need cuddles and warmth. So you immediately take advantage of the fact he’s lain on his back to mold your entire body against his, and it’s when your hand lands on his chest that you realise that he’s changed out of the sweater he wore last night to a tank top.

Rather thin for this weather. 

Wait. 

He’s warm as fuck, really fucking warm and he smells like something fresh but cosy, like violets and this isn't…

He puts an arm over your middle to move you with him as he shifts to his side, effortlessly cradling your back against his chest before he breathes in and out and you feel his nose in the crook of your neck, his breath on your collarbones. A shudder shocks every inch of your body when his knees find their place in the back of your own, when he lets out the tiniest huff of air, when he finds just the right kind of comfort with his cheek against your skin. His arm tightens around you and he’s warm, so warm that it shuts your entire brain down. 

You could have moved, you could have settled onto the other side of the bed as you were just a bit ago, you could have slithered out of his touch because this shouldn’t happen, it cannot happen. But you don’t, you don’t and you’re huddling closer to him and there is a tiny smile on your face that should not be there but you won’t chase away. 

Because the heat of Jinki’s body lulls you back to sleep almost instantly.

 

>[ _i_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhYi4jkFpRBA&t=ZDU5NTM4OWY4ZGU3OGQ1NTE5NjYzMWMyYTEwMTg3NDIyODVlZDc4NSxaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1) _’m that fire kind, we could burn together_

Maybe it’s all the liquor you drank last night, but your body is straight up  _scalding_  when the sun finally hits your eyes. Your skin feels almost feverish, your lower back especially hot as you groan and breathe in a yawn to rise to wakefulness. 

And then you remember. It’s not because of the booze or because of the sun that your entire body feels like it’s two seconds from combusting. 

Jinki’s body temperature is whack as fuck but he is still somehow perfect, you don’t want him to move and you don’t want to move, either. 

His hold on you is not vicious, it’s gentle and malleable. His arm moves with you as you turn to face him, still circling your hips when you look up at his entirely passed out features and try to hide a smile. 

The cute ones are always the most trouble.

A voice in your head tells you to get up and off this bed, to make your way home before either of you can embarrass yourselves (or each other) even further, but you still allow yourself one minute of staring at the curves of this boy’s face, the scars of his teenage years and the tiny marks that freckle all the way down his arms and bits of his exposed chest before reality kicks you again. 

Carefully, you begin to slither out of his arm and away from him so you can get out through the other side of the bed. 

Just as carefully, he grins and grabs at the first limb in his reach. Then his yank is gentle on your forearm but it’s quick and strong, it’s seconds before you roll back to the other side and his nose touches yours only for a moment. He laughs when your eyes widen, when you gasp, and he lets you pull yourself away to look into his very open, very awake and very smug eyes.

“Good morning,” even now his voice is gorgeous and you think you’d have swooned if you were on your feet, you’ve always been really, really sensitive to everything after just waking up. “That was payback.”

“Good morning,” and you’ve never been a morning person so you’re pretty fucking amazed at the grin on your face right now, at the tingles tickling your skin. “Payback for what?”

“For trapping me in here when I came to check on you earlier.” 

The truth is he doesn’t care that you successfully caged him to this bed without even touching him all that much. The original plan was to come back after initiating the new pledges to drop off a huge glass of water and some aspirin for you so he could go about the rest of the day without having to worry about you. But no sooner had he lain back on his side of the bed to rest his eyes for a few minutes did you completely take over his sovereignty in search of warmth. He’d like to say that he didn’t want to wake you up, which is why he didn’t fight back, but… 

You’re cute. And he’s dumb. The worst part is that he actually fell back asleep and ditched the rest of the welcoming event for his new little brothers to be your extra blanket. 

Because you’re cute as fuck. And he’s dumb as fuck.

Honestly, he doesn’t think anyone he knows would’ve been able to deny you in the moment, when you shivered that violently at the loss of heat that came with his and Taemin’s departure just before dawn, when you fit so well against his chest, when he was so dazed by the refreshingly warm scent of your skin. 

Not when you still look this stunning with the veil of sleep clouding your eyes. 

“… Sorry not sorry? This room is cold as shit, how do you even sleep in here?” 

You don’t really want to address your embarrassing actions from the past ten hours first thing in the morning. And Jinki laughs, probably because he doesn’t want to talk about that stuff right now, either. So he doesn’t let the silence between you float around for too long, though you think he notices how your chest rises and falls a bit faster to match your increasing heart rate. 

“I don’t really sleep much these days,” he tells you in the end, and he accommodates himself on his side, propping up his elbow on his pillow so he can rest his head on the palm of his hand. There’s just a bit more distance between you now, so he can look at your whole face while he speaks. It relaxes you a lot, actually, to see him this comfortable. “And I don’t mind the cold.”

“Clearly,” you shoot him raised eyebrows and take advantage of the way the duvet cascades off his body, “given the fact you’re wearing next to nothing and you’re still that hot… ” wait a minute, you’re really looking at him now and—  

“You think I’m hot?”

You shoot him all too sober eyes and he bursts into cackles, louder this time. Where did the softness you saw in him last night go? You scan his eyes, his jaw and his torso in search for it, but instead you see very well-defined muscle and taut skin. 

“Are those… ?” he shoots a quizzical look at your question, which turns all too smug when you hook the low neck of his shirt under your index finger and lift it, leaning over his chest to see that yes, there is a six pack beyond these centerfold worthy pectorals. 

“Are these photoshopped? Please tell me these are photoshopped.” 

You’re hilarious even when he’s sober, and he hadn’t realised how much he missed this feeling, this feeling that he only shared with the other four kids before, with someone outside of his every circle. And he feels extra smug when you look up from his chest to his eyes, the distance between you unnecessarily minimal. He wishes he could breathe you in just a bit longer, he really wants to get used to this even if it lands him in the kind of shit he doesn’t need right now. 

“Minho and Jonghyun made a bet, said I couldn’t do it.” 

In the end it’d been easier than he thought, the whole body building thing. And he still eats a whole fried chicken at least twice a week. 

You shamelessly lift his shirt again, from the hem this time, and stare wide-eyed at what’s underneath; every time you look up at his face and back down it’s like you expect the hard lines down and across his abdomen to suddenly disappear. You did notice his defined arms and thighs last night, but this… 

“Is this part of frat fuckboy etiquette or something? All of you are ripped.”

Even Taemin and Kibum dedicated most of last semester to getting mega fit, which is why their quads and abs are quite literally the stuff of one of those really unrealistic fantasy romance novels. 

“Why? Don’t you like it?”

“You have the face of a skin care model and the body of an MMA champion, I’m sure very few people  _dis_ like you.” 

“You’d be surprised.”

“Are you kidding? You’re like something out of a dream, dude.” You wish you were less stupid and more careful with your words first thing in the morning, but it is first thing in the morning.

“Your dreams?”

“Just,” you try not to chuckle and fail, “dreams. Stop flattering yourself, I have a boyfriend.”

And it feels weird, if feels like you’re doing something wrong but the kind of wrong that is so right that it makes you question any judgement you had before you first laid eyes on him.

He grins and shifts in his spot, pressing his lips together before licking them as he watches you a bit more pensively. “What’s your plan for today?”

“I have radio at midnight. You?” And your puffy eyes look oh, so excited about it, so he chuckles a bit and huddles closer to the pillow now under his arm. 

“I have work at 6.”

An embarrassing growl from your stomach interrupts the conversation, and you can do little else but snort and let the warmth you feel creeping up your neck spread. “Can I borrow that toothbrush again? And maybe more clothes. Maybe.”

He looks delighted that you even asked, and lets the question linger for a moment longer than he should. “Sure.” 

This time he lets you slide away from his reach, watches you sit up before you beckon him to do the same because you’re hungry and he’s the king of the house so he should do something about it. 

And then the door bursts open, and your reflexes tell you that the correct reaction is to lift the duvet to cover you both up to your shoulders. 

Kibum smirks at you from the doorframe, obviously  _very_  amused. “Are you fucking? About to fuck? I can come back later.”

Immediately, you throw the covers off of you and off of the black haired boy next to you to reveal your fully clothed bodies, and Jinki actually giggles. “What do you want, Key?”

“Good morning to you, too, princess,” the chestnut haired boy steps further into the room and you notice the bundle of clothes in his arm, “Jjong and Minho are helping the littles move out of the dorms and I’m doing my best to not help at all,” he chuckles, but you know he’s full of shit because he has a heart of gold so he’s probably actually helping them. “I got some clothes for you while Taemin packed.”

Even though you’re prepared to smack him, you smile, getting up to walk over to him. “Thank you, darling,” you say genuinely, even though from here you can tell that he didn’t bring you any old regular outfit to wear.

The truth is you have only yourself to blame for showing Kibum where you keep your lingerie. For showing him your lingerie, too, for letting him gift you some when you went shopping last weekend.

He’s smirking the entire time that you unfold the sheer black lace romper to refold atop Jinki’s bed along with other matching lace lingerie you don’t mind showing anyone. You’ve grown pretty insensitive to males since you started to live with Taemin, and after spending a good chunk of your morning in Jinki’s arms, you don’t feel as uncomfortable about this as you could.

Kibum loves you so much right now, because if you have any shame at all, you sure as hell don’t let it show.   

“I can’t believe you still had the tag on it!” he tells you, obviously offended. “Isn’t that gorgeous, hyung?” 

Jinki voices no opinion about the long-sleeved piece but he does think it’s pretty. He also likes that it’s kind of chaste about how it teases his brain, how innocently it tugs at bits of his mind that can’t help but picture you in it. But he only watches with an amused grin at the way you’re not at all embarrassed at this very exposing exchange. For once he’s actually a bit jealous of whoever your lover is, he’s jealous of how transparent you are about everything and he wonders how you are around him, if he’s often as amused or intrigued as Jinki is right now.

Kibum watches his big and smiles so wide that he thinks he might blush. 

“You  _have_  to wear it today,” Kibum’s eyes are back on you, “will you? I’ll be so happy.”

“You’re laying the Cupid act on thick today, Kim Kibum.”

“Are you intimidated? I could have brought the other thing.”

“What other thing?” Jinki is clueless, almost childish in how he asks.

“ _Don’t_!” you shoot at Kibum, and spare Jinki a death stare before turning to retrieve the toiletry bag still in Kibum’s arms. “Thank you for your help, please leave now and don’t come near me for like a good six hours or I will punch your ballsack so hard you will never be able to top Jjong ever again.”

You never knew Kibum could run that fast. Or laugh that hard.

A heavy sigh floods from your lips as you move to shut the door, and you turn to Jinki with apologetic eyes. “I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable, Kibum has a really special way of making things awkward and I really don’t understand why he’s so obsessed with us.”

“I’m not uncomfortable.”

“Really?”

“Not one bit. It’s cute. You’re cute.”

“What?” you feel like he’s just saying it to not perpetuate the tension you can almost taste in the air you’re sharing, so you turn around and approach the bathroom. “Don’t do that, it’s more burdensome.”

“Don’t be embarrassed.”

“You think I’m really weird but I promise I am a totally redeemable kind of weird.”

“I like you, regardless.” 

Your heart somersaults to your stomach and up your throat and back down. You gulp to help it get back to its place and turn to stare at Jinki completely wide-eyed and in disbelief at his blatant tone, at his sober, twinkling eyes, at the the smile tickling the corner of his mouth. 

“What?” 

“I like you,” he looks even more serene now, “as in, you’re not insufferable and I honestly enjoy your company. Also your wits, I like your brain. Does that burden you?”

You unconsciously let out air through your barely parted lips, it’s mixed with the relief that flushes your features because your chest was swelling and burning just a few seconds ago and it wasn’t all that terrifying but it means nothing, it’s nothing because  _he’s talking about you as a friend_. 

For a few good reasons you’d rather not list, you’re really flattered anyway. 

“As for the other thing, you have someone. And no matter how much Kibum might hate it, he respects it. And I guess I do, too.”

You smile at him, wide and sincere, and turn back around. And then you faceplant against the bathroom wall when you’re inside.

“Don’t hurt yourself!” these walls are too thin and you hear Jinki laughing. “I’ll give you other clothes after we have breakfast. I’ll even roll you a jay for your troubles, okay?”

Something tugs at you and it’s not bad, it’s something you recognise but hadn’t felt in such a long time… there’s almost too much familiarity here. 

It’s true that sharing a bed with someone changes your relationship to them; deepens it and makes it more comfortable. It’s true that proximity mixed with sleep does a little something to friendships, to relationships, to family bonds. But should you let it happen just like that? Shouldn’t you fight it a bit? You recognise these advances even if he does not, shouldn’t you stop him?

This isn’t like what you feel around Taemin or Key or Jjong or even Choi Minho… this is… 

“Do you want hangover soup or fried chicken?” he asks from the other side of the door, and you don’t know you’re smiling as you lean into the bathroom door until you remember telling him last night that it’s usually what you eat after a night of drinking. 

Why does he remember? Why did you tell him? Why is your heart beating like that, like it wants to break every bone in your ribcage and also jump up your throat, like you don’t have someone else that’s supposed to be making you feel like this even when they’re absent? 

You want to run but you also want to latch on, latch on to this voice and this feeling in your chest and latch on to the smile tugging at your mouth.

“Both?”

He laughs again, and you wish you’d never met him. 

 

>[ _i_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DBvvCTxIYUCc&t=N2QyNTkzZjUyNmE0OGVlYjQwYzg0ODk1ZGMxMjBhYjVjZjk0MGU1MyxaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1) _’m closing up the longer that i wait_

The frat house is scarily normal when it’s empty, when daylight paints its wooden floors and its dark walls. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s almost 5PM and you’ve been here for about sixteen hours in all manner of situations, but you’re surprisingly comfortable, wrapped in a blanket Jinki kept folded in his linen cabinet because the heating is on way too low for you to be walking around in sheer lace. 

It is also a joy to follow the delicious smell teasing your nostrils all the way to the little breakfast table in the kitchen. 

Half of a fried chicken split in two plates, the most delicious (and spicy) looking bowls of hangover soup next to them, and the thickest joint you’ve ever laid eyes on in the middle. He even has [C](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DTHMGdN7BjbY&t=N2UxYmNlOGRkNDEyZTNkN2ExZWRiYmE5ZTBkNGQ1NWEyYWEyODRmZSxaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1)het Faker going in on in the background. 

Despite the platonic date set up, you’re skipping over to sit down with a mouth splitting grin on your face. Jinki can’t see you, though, because he’s busy messing with his French press to make some coffee. 

“If you keep treating me like this I might wife you,” you tell him offhandedly, and you see his shoulders shake with his laughter and you can’t help but follow along. “But you can’t tell anyone. Especially Kibum.”

He comes around and sits across from you, and only now you notice that though his face is dewy and his movement is nothing short of graceful, there’s lethargy in his eyes, in the way he smiles, and you can’t help but want to make him feel better. But you don’t know him, and you don’t know how. 

So when he motions you to eat and moves to do the same, you hesitate.

“Thank you,” you tell him, and he nods through his first spoonful of soup. 

“Where are the others, anyway?”

Jinki shrugs and it actually looks like he’s relieved by the silence that fills the house. “All bigs have their own little initiation rituals. And whoever doesn’t have a big is probably setting up camp at that music festival going on this weekend.”

You hum through your first bite of chicken, first because it’s delicious and then because you remembered you had to yell at someone about the hazing thing. “You didn’t actually haze Taemin, right? I’m pretty sure it’s illegal.”

“Hazing? We don’t haze new kids.”

You watch with narrow eyes as Jinki sets down his spoon and moves for the joint, pulling out a mini green lighter from his pocket to light up. 

Usually the smell of burning weed doesn’t sit well with the smell of food, but you’ve actually grown fond of the sweet spiciness. You don’t notice that you suck your lower lip between your teeth as you watch the thinnest stream of smoke slither past the corner of Jinki’s mouth and rise from the tip of the joint. His gaze follows yours as it trails his lips and the side of his face up to his eyes and you don’t care that he catches you because he is nothing but welcoming. 

Maybe you’re still asleep, and the way he’s making you feel is something your brain is making up and not something else. 

“Then where did you take him this morning?” 

Jinki smiles as he takes another hit before passing the joint over to you. “It’s my ritual as President. I take all newbies to watch the sunrise the morning after their acceptance.”

“What’s the catch?” you ask because you know there is one, it’s probably why he’s still grinning as he watches you take your first hit. 

“They have to wear shorts and the thinnest shirt they own,” he smiles, and you sit back and narrow your eyes at him. “Don’t look at me like that, I have to do it, too.” 

Oh, so that’s why, okay. And here you were thinking he was just insensitive to the cold, or immune to the winter or something.

You nod and take another hit, already feeling the entirety of your body dilating. Since there’s nothing you can do about the tension between you and him, you might as well try and do something about the tension inside you. And man, is this shit doing the job. 

Normally you would go for a spliff during the day, because you’ve been craving tobacco in the mornings for a few months now, but this is fruity and so full bodied that you don’t mind how overbearing it is. How your heartbeat is already quickening, how your lungs are already on fire and feel smaller than they actually are.

How overbearing this entire situation is. 

“How come I’d never met you?” he’s been meaning to ask since last night, he’s kind of mad Kibum, Jonghyun and Taemin kept you to themselves all this time when it’s been almost six months since his little joined the frat. 

You smile at the curiosity in his tone. “I don’t know,” you shrug, passing back the joint and moving for the soup, “I’ve been with Taemin every time he shows up at your parties.” 

“But we’re on the same department, our majors always work together. I know I’m three years ahead of you but I should’ve spotted you around the PMA halls at least once. And you work with Jonghyun. How come I’d never seen you?”

“Would you remember if you had? This lowly freshman sapling?”

He narrows his eyes at you, fully aware you’re just fishing for compliments, and takes a hit of the joint as you wait for the praise to come. 

It doesn’t, and you laugh and take another spoonful of soup. “I don’t know, I’m always all over the place.”

Today is actually your first ‘full’ day off of the semester, and you still have work at midnight and study for that midterm on Monday and finish the essay you have to hand in for a second class. There’s no break after that because you’re already working on your final project for your Sound Design class and preparing for your final presentation for Set Design II. All in between working the radio, too. 

When you explain yourself to the dark-haired boy, he actually smiles. 

“Bit of a workaholic, are we?” 

“I like being busy,” you confess, smiling because you know that even Jinki barely has time to sit down, which is why he hosts these crazy fucking parties at least once a week. “Keeps me sane.”

So he asks you what you do, and between spoonfuls of soup and bites of chicken and hits and sips of water, he watches your eyes light up as you go off about your dreams of being on and off stage and in recording studios, your dreams of pursuing all of the knowledge you can get from the arts that surround you. Your words make your eyes sparkle, and it might be the weed and how good the food is, or maybe it’s because the atmosphere that the weed and the food are so good, but you’re glowing and it almost makes him mad. 

He’s giggling like a fucking teenager. And you’re giggling back, the look on your face almost blatantly clueless. Jinki guesses it’s because you’ve never been in a situation like this, and you haven’t, you’ve never sat across from someone like him in a set up like this… 

You’ve never felt like this and it should scare you, but it doesn’t.

For the first time in a really long time, you’re not anxious or nervous or afraid. He feels like something you know, someone you’ve always known and can never fear, someone you can never doubt, and though that should be even scarier, it isn’t. All you feel is… can you even name it? This thing in your chest?

Later. You’ll do that later.

Now, you eat, and you smoke and sip water and you look at this boy and you ask yourself how the fuck any of this makes any sense at all. And how at the same time, it makes all the sense in the world. 

You only manage to keep your own thoughts astray until he takes your dishes to the sink and guides you to the living room couch, where just last night you’d felt like you knew nothing about him, and now you know just a bit more. He sits next to you, maybe a tad too close for comfort, but you don’t mind it. It’s so easy not to mind it. 

It’s so easy that you want to leave, you need to leave because you don’t want to feel any more. 

But he re-lights the joint for you and passes it along, and the smile on his face reaches his eyes and is ultimately too bright, too pretty for you to deny. So you let him humour you, let him let you lift your phone to your eyes and scroll about your texts because you need to have something to look at that’s not him, and he does the same for probably the same reason. Eventually, though, your eyes flicker back to him, to the way he smiles with reddened eyes, lazily but still so energetically. 

“Your head is  _tiny_.”

He tries to answer but laughter flows past his lips first. “Is that a compliment?”

Your head tilts to the side and a reluctant smile blooms on your face as you consider your answer much too carefully. “It’s just— ”

Cold, your hands are a little cold on his cheeks but he’s laughing because your smile has made your eyes look smaller. 

“Tiny.”

The moment comes, stands still like a picture, and then it condenses. And you can’t handle it anymore. 

When your hands slide away from his skin, his only hope is that you didn’t notice that even his breathing stopped. The look in his eyes betrays the war going on in his chest, it’s too warm, too inviting, and he worries that you might feel like he does. It makes him feel cripplingly guilty, but glad, he’d be so glad. 

“Do you think they’re done messing up my dorm room? I should head over there,” you forgot you had the joint in hand all this time, and you pass it back to him and rearrange your clothes to look like you can go outside. 

Which you still don’t think you can. 

So you groan, extra dramatically, and slide sideways on the couch till your temple lands on the opposite armrest of the furniture. And then you sigh. 

“Can you walk me home? And lend me like, the longest, thickest, most unattractive winter coat you own?”

 

Turns out, Kibum’s first self-appointed mission as Jinki’s little was to revamp his entire closet, so Jinki doesn’t actually own any unattractive winter coats. 

Which makes sense, because he always looks like he jumped out of a viral lookbook. 

So he ends up handing you over a long tail wool coat that covers you basically down to your ankles, and you’re far too grateful to even say anything as you both head over to your dorms building. You’re not rushing, either, because it’s much warmer than it had been when you first woke up and you both reach for cigarettes almost simultaneously. 

And for reasons you’d rather not divulge even to yourself, you want to extend this for as long as you can. 

You don’t think you’re ready to get back to your reality yet, because the world still glows when you blink your eyes, because there’s a buzz at your heart that makes you feel detached but elated, to be in this city, walking down this street, to match your pace with the person walking next to you. Probably equally dazed and just as lost as you, too. There’s so much comfort here, so much comfort you don’t want to let go of. 

Kibum and Jonghyun are stepping out with huge cardboard boxes as you approach the building’s entrance, and they are not all that surprised to see you. Taemin is, though, and he chuckles, empty-handed, and envelops you in a hug as soon as he’s close enough. 

“Are you wearing all the lingerie Key hyung stole under this coat?” 

“Did you watch him take it and not stop him?”

He laughs harder this time, and breaks away from you with a sly grin on his pretty mouth. “You should go up and see what me and Minho hyung left you as a parting gift.” 

Taemin blows you a kiss when he notices your very flat expression, and he flutters away with one of his cotton candy smiles before you turn around to Jinki and sigh. Suddenly, you’re tired, you’re too tired and you could really use a nap right now. 

So you take off Jinki’s coat and hand it back to him, a grateful smile threatening your lips. You let it come out because he doesn’t deserve your animosity, at least not right now. 

“Thank you for last night. Also, for breakfast. And the smoke. I’ll treat you next time.” you say, and he knows you mean it, so he smiles and it’s almost too much for you to handle right now. 

“I’ll take you up on that,” he warns, coming closer to drape the coat back around your shoulders because he doesn’t want other people to notice how thin and gorgeous and out of place your clothes are right now. “Actually… the Opera House is opening  _Singin’ In the Rain_ on Monday night. Come by. You can give this back to me then.”

You fiddle with the dark wool, mostly because you recognise the tone of his voice, you recognise what he’s really trying to say here. 

 _Let me see you again_. 

“My boyfriend is coming in Monday morning, though.”

“So bring him, too.”

You laugh before you can stop yourself, and you look up to his clueless, stunning, overwhelmingly welcoming eyes and relent. 

“Okay.”

When you get back up to your dorm room, your heart rate has settled to some form of normalcy. The whole double room smells like dust and Taemin’s cologne, and it’s quite unexpectedly cold now that all his stuff is gone. 

You’re almost sad about being in a single room now. Even if it is the largest of its kind, being a handicapped one and all. 

Until you notice that yours and Taemin’s beds have been pushed together to make one, how the boys spread bedsheets, pillows and the thickest duvet over it to make it look almost regal. Taemin went as far as hanging fairy lights above it to make a sort of bed frame, and it would all have been perfect if not for the modestly sized note lain across the red linens. 

_Congratulations On the Sex, Pls Have More Here_

“I’ll kill him.”

 

>[ _w_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dm-atgQb75iw&t=NjI3MTY0NjcyOWU0ZTZlMTcyNmNhNGJmZmRiNmNkNmRjN2E0NjUxOCxaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1) _ill you catch me if i fall too hard?_

It’s Monday evening. 

You aced your midterm exam and project.

And you’re standing in front of your full-body mirror in the cutest little black dress. You have every intention of going to the Opera House, of milking the few hours you have before you have to be a slave to a sound booth to go to  _Singin’ in the Rain_ ’s opening night. 

Then your phone buzzes, and you only check out of reflex. 

_I’m downstairs. Do you have an excuse ready?_

Taemin really is your best worst friend. So you pass on a response, instead speeding up the final touches on the gold in your eyes and on your cheekbones and the burgundy on your lips before heading down to the dorm building lobby, Jinki’s coat in hand. As announced, Taemin is standing outside the entrance, Kibum standing across him with a cigarette between his thumb and index fingers. 

You’re actually quite grateful for them both, grateful enough even to steal Kibum’s cigarette. 

“We’re already late, let’s go. He’ll kill me if I don’t see him before the show starts,” Kibum doesn’t greet you, but the look in his eyes is enough to let you know he’s really glad to see you, he’s happy to be with you even though you’ve only been separated for a few days. 

“You should audition for one of these local musicals, Kibum,” you say, conversationally, when Kibum passes his flaskful of vodka to you in exchange for his cigarette. “You’d be amazing.”

He snickers, because he knows you’re right, and blushes a bit. “Maybe I will.”

“C’mon,” you press on, “picture yourself as the next fuckin’ Clyde. The next Frankie Abagnale Jr. You’d wreck it.” 

You watch him imagine it, you see the glint pop up in his dark eyes, you notice how it makes him blush and push your shoulder with extra spunk. 

The Opera House is three train stops and a fifteen minute walk away from campus, and you make it to the main doors just in time to get the last few good seats of the venue. It’s packed, even despite the fact that the sound system has announced that the House’s understudy will be playing the male lead tonight. 

Kibum is still mumbling about not seeing Jinki before the show when the lights go down, when they resurface upon the stage and you lay eyes on Don Lockwood. 

_Lee Jinki as Don Lockwood._

You wonder if he’s ever looked this good. You wonder if he always looks this good in a dark suit, with his coal black hair slicked back like that, and you really can’t wait till that hat comes off so you can get a good look at him, but… 

“Holy shit, he never said he was the understudy for the show.”

You’re a bit surprised at the words coming out of Kibum’s mouth, especially because they’d have been coming out of yours had he waited a second longer. 

And you’re suddenly glad that he’d kept his voice to himself that night at the party… because he sounds refreshingly delectable in the opening number of the show. 

Great, this is great, you can’t stop staring at him. The hat eventually comes off and so does the suit jacket and yup, this is definitely 100% what you need in your life right now. The funky feeling in your chest is back and the tug you feel inside it is still unfamiliar, it’s warm but it’s foreign and you don’t know what this is, and quite frankly, you don’t want to know. 

Taemin nudges you after the first act is over. “What will you tell him?” he whispers in your ear, and you smile and shrug because you don’t know. 

When it comes to this boy who didn’t mean a thing to you last week, you don’t know anything. And you still don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing, thinking, saying when the show’s done. 

“Are you coming to the party?” Taemin asks, mostly to confirm. He laughs when he reads your eyes and realises you have no idea what he’s talking about. 

“On a Monday?”

“It’s his first time as a lead!”

“And you don’t have any more work to do, anyway.” 

“You’re so nosy.”

“But you love me.” Sadly, you do love Kibum.

He’s right, too, you don’t have radio until Wednesday this week…

“Whatever,” Kibum is extra dismissive when he’s in a hurry, “we have to go finish setting up. Whether you’re coming or not is up to you. It’d be nice, but it’s up to you.”

“You’re not going to see him before you leave?” it’d be sucky of him if he didn’t, Jinki’s probably feeling like a million dollars right now and you bet he’d love to be buttered up by his brothers right now.  

But Kibum gives you the slyest, most mischievous look you’ve seen, and you’re suddenly very afraid. 

“No. Because you are.”

“What?”

“Tell him we said hi!” and Taemin’s getting whisked away and before you know it, they’re out of sight. And you can only sigh, because you anyways have to give him his coat back and you wonder if they planned this from the fucking start. 

It feels like you’ve aged five years in the time it takes for you to follow the perimeter of the Opera House till you find the stage door, currently lined with women of varying ages and the occasional father or whiny boyfriend. 

And out comes the star of the night. 

Even from this distance, you have to admit that he does look like someone who jumped out of a movie screen. Maybe it’s the glare of the lights above him mixed with the chill of winter but the blend of hard and soft edges on his face is especially stark right now. Though that could also be credited to the fact that his hair is still coiffed away from his forehead, which you’re still not used to but really don’t mind. 

And he knows he looks that good, a new kind of confidence oozes from him because he’s in a more casual suit now, his face especially bright because he just rid it of stage makeup and went for the tiniest layer of BB cream and just a hint of lip balm. 

What? The winter’s brutal on nice skin.

He’s explained who he is and how he came to steal tonight’s show to three different girls, and he’s still a little blind from the stage lights so he can’t see anything all that well. But eventually his eyes adjust, enough so he can genuinely smile and repeat once again that yes, he’s new, that he only took the part tonight because both the production’s male lead and his understudy came down with a terrible virus, that since he’d stepped in at a rehearsal one time, the House felt he was the only choice they had for the part. It probably won’t happen again, even though the show’s producers are mighty impressed with him, but maybe this might be a step closer to working on other, smaller scale productions, who knows?

You guess you’re too distracted by the new energies radiating from his aura that you don’t realise that it’s begun to snow. Until he looks up and straight at you.

The first thing he notices is the red of your mouth, the red of your winter coat. Because just by that, he knows it’s you. 

You watch and stand idly as the conversations start to wrap up. A girl actually asks for Jinki’s autograph at the very end, saying that she needs it because she knows he’ll be a star one day, and you chuckle because he blushes and his hands shake the whole time he signs her playbill. 

He’s still so nervous after he starts to walk in your direction that he slips on the thin layer of white on the ground and almost faceplants on the dusted concrete of the sidewalk. 

To which you laugh, shamelessly. 

“Where’s your coat?” is the first thing you say to him when he slides in front of you, brawnier and almost more winsome than he’d looked on stage. He looks down to the coat in your hand, his try at a skittish answer. 

“Have you not worn a coat all day?” today was one of the coldest days of the entire season, too. He shakes his head and you immediately sigh and hang the wool over one of his shoulders. “Gloves? Hat? Scarf?”

He smiles, toothy and embarrassed, and you take off your own scarf (it’s Taemin’s, anyway) to wrap it around his neck. 

“How old are you? Nine?”

“Nine and a half, thanks very much.”

You purse your lips to stop from laughing and look off to the street, and he wonders if you can tell that he’d done it on purpose, leave all his winter gear at home, especially because to this exact moment he cannot understand why he would do something that dumb. Sure, maybe the way this show made him a nervous wreck the past twelve hours made it a bit hard to concentrate on the weather and not on the entire performance he was supposed to deliver to a full house, but he never does this kind of shit, for anyone. 

“Take care of that throat,” and you don’t think he catches on to your words until you smile, “you’re a big singing star now, remember?” 

He laughs, fully, like he’s exhaling all of the stress that had piled up on his shoulders today. The red at the tip of his nose and in the apples of his cheeks is particularly noticeable with all the black he’s wearing, it makes you smile the tiniest bit as you turn and start a path towards the nearest train station. You don’t wait for him to follow but he catches up to your pace quickly, stuffing his hands in his coat pockets because they’re getting really red from the chill of the night. 

“How was it?” he looks off to the snowy sky to feign nonchalance, but still peers at you from the corners of his eyes. 

“How was it? You got a freakin’ standing ovation at the end of both acts. You truly honoured the great Gene Kelly.”

“I did not,” he argues, and you hum.

“You did.”

“Did not.” 

“The point is,” you shiver a bit because your neck is exposed and the wind just picked up as you turn a corner to a bigger street, “you were great, and when word gets out, everyone is going to want you on their productions after you graduate.” 

“You’re very good at buttering people up.”

You spare him a smile and shrug. “I have no reason to butter you up,” and he chuckles, “not like I want anything in exchange, right?”

“What about your boyfriend?”

You falter in your footing and almost trip on a bit of sidewalk but you come back to quickly. “Jetlag,” you look back up at Jinki, “he got home half dead,” you add a laugh for effect and his own dims and you almost feel guilty. 

A few seconds of silence pass, but it’s not totally uncomfortable. You detour through a small park, and the thin coat of snow on the ground makes you both perk up despite how dark it is out here. 

“We’re throwing a party tonight, to celebrate, you know, all this,” he doesn’t know why he’s telling you this, he’s pretty sure someone must have told you already. “Are… are you coming?”

You don’t meet his gaze as you drag your feet on the ground to make a path through the snow, but your answer is imminent. 

“I wish I could, but, you know, girlfriend duties.” You shrug when you finally manage to catch his eyes, and you try not to get distracted by how snowflakes catch on his dark hair. “I only managed to sneak out because he passed out as soon as he got to the room.”

“You sneaked out?”

Oops. “W-well,” you stutter a bit, but you think he passes it as a trick of the weather, “he’s a bit… territorial. And I hate it when he interrogates me about where I’m going and who I’m seeing and stuff. Basically, he only really trusts me with Taemin. Everyone else is kind of,” you make a face that makes you look like a whiny cartoon character and it makes him burst out laughing. 

And you think that’s why he doesn’t realise, that he doesn’t sense that the girl he’s walking with right now is a complete mirage. 

“Is that why Kibum doesn’t like him?”

“Kibum doesn’t like anyone I’m friends with,” and he has actually met a lot of your ex-boyfriends (sour party you went to last Thanksgiving). He hated all of them, but by then he’d already been preaching that he’d found the perfect man for you. “Anyway, don’t date a jealous person. I’m in too deep, but you can still save yourself.” 

“Do you ever get jealous?”

You falter again and this time he does notice, so you look up to the sky and wonder how you should answer. “Not like that, no.” 

You’re stepping out of the park now, the train stop is about twenty feet away and you stop walking just as Jinki steps under the station’s lights. 

“So, have fun tonight.”

Jinki swirls around to catch your eyes and the guilty smile on your face, and it actually upsets him a bit. “You’re not coming back to campus?”

You smile wider. “He really likes that bakery in the corner over the next block,” and you point right at the establishment with a tilt of your chin, “so I’m gonna pick up some pastries. Maybe I’ll even get coffee, too, they have the best cold brew in town,” and you hum with a smile as you start to walk past and away from him. “I’m pretty amazed he hasn’t called me saying he’s starving yet, he must be really out of it.” 

You look over your shoulder at him when he doesn’t answer, and you’re almost sad at the forlorn look on his face. 

“Come with me.”

Forward. Brazen, so you laugh. And when that settles, you look at him with the sternest eyes you can muster right now. 

“You’re already out, anyway,” he goes on, “and if he hasn’t called, then he’s still passed out. Just come for a bit and go.” 

“Would you do it? If you were in my shoes?”

Those words wipe the valor clean off his features, and immediately his face falls. Because he wouldn’t, if you were waiting at home for him, hungry and jetlagged and alone. He’d ditch just about anyone to get back to you, not just because it’s you but also because, right, the commitment and stuff and the binds of trust and yeah, all that—   

“I’ll text you,” you’re starting to turn around again. “Get wrecked in my honour!”

And he watches you walk away. He wants to be mad and hold your actions against you but he can’t, because you’re not denying a night full of thrill to be with someone you clearly love and he can’t get in the way of that. 

You won’t let him get in the way of that. 

 

>[ _j_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DcpsI2h_Jzas&t=YTg0NzEyNGVjMGRjOTM4Yjc2NGFiNTRhZmJkMTZiNjVlYzllMDkyMyxaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1) _ust say i want you_

Things get a bit sidetracked once you get inside the bakery. You do end up buying some pastries, and you sit in a booth with a warm buttery pair of croissants and cold brew coffee. Your snack time comes and goes uneventfully, and you really think you will get away with tonight as you settle into the warmth of your little booth, which is right under a heater, and sigh contentedly. 

And then your phone buzzes. 

It’s Jonghyun. And his other co-DJ just collapsed in the booth halfway through the show, and he needs you to come in immediately. 

“But my—  ”

“Save me and I swear I will be your slave for the rest of the semester,” his voice is small, shrill, there’s not that much longer till the show gets past the next commercial break and Jonghyun is in charge of the console tonight. Doing that and also DJ-ing is really hard because it’s his first time alone in the booth, and you know he’s asking mostly so you can be his moral support. 

Jonghyun is capable of a lot of shit, this you know all too well. You know he could handle the entire radio show with just a CP and a sound engineer, but he doesn’t have enough confidence to try it out just  yet. 

So you yield. Because nothing you do really ever goes to plan, anyway. And Jonghyun almost bursts into tears. 

 

“I don’t even know what you were worried about,” it’s the second to last commercial break and Jonghyun is swirling on his rolling chair behind the console looking smug as fuck. You’ve done pretty much nothing but read listener messages since you walked in, most of them praising JjongDJ for being a jack of all trades on top of looking like a Goryeo era prince. 

“I was lonely,” he says, voice still small because he really is nervous about having to manage the console and the playlist and the mic. 

“You should’ve called Zhang Yixing,” that’s the sound design crew’s prodigy, who’s actually really good friends with Jonghyun and manages the mic, the console and the engineering at the radio show that airs before yours. 

“He took Chanyeol to the ER,” the boy explains, and it makes sense because Jonghyun’s other co-DJ and Yixing and that other cute guy that kind of looks like a lion cub always walk around like they’re attached at the hip. 

You’re about to ask what happened to the lanky dude, but Jonghyun beats you to it as he starts to cue the BGM, commercials will only go on for twenty more seconds. “He forgot he was allergic to cat fur and the CP brought in her kitten to work today.” 

“Don’t laugh!” but you can’t stop, you’re doubling over even when the ad noises duck out and Jonghyun’s voice filtres back in. “You can’t make fun of other people’s allergies!”

The conversation goes on even when you’re back on air, Jonghyun happily sharing that the reason why his other co-DJ is at the mic tonight is because they’re a heartless, soulless friend who came to both save his backside and also laugh at him. Then he introduces one of Beck’s [b](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D_L16J4Sk944&t=NzcxYmExMmE5NDI0MmRmOGVlODljYjIzNDBiOTkzNzdkMjEyZTg1YixaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1)est and you start to really look at him, beyond the headphones and behind that giant mic and that chunky console, beyond his entire work guise… 

Kim Jonghyun is amazing. But no man’s an island, and you’re glad you came to him. 

Until you realise you left your half-drunk cold brew coffee at the bakery.

You’re pretty quiet throughout the close of the show, because it’s 1:57AM and you actually really want to go to sleep— 

And then your phone rings. And it’s Taemin. At 2AM sharp, because he has the best fucking timing in the world. 

“What happened?”

“Hey,” it’s Kibum and the grin tugging at your face disappears at his somber tone, “I-I need you to come over. I think Taemin has alcohol poisoning and I don’t know what to do, can you please come over, p-please come over, okay? Can you tell Jonghyun? He’s not answering his phone, have you seen him?”

“Stop, stop, Key, stop. I’m at the radio station, Jjong’s with me, we’re on our way,” you’re getting up and so is Jonghyun, and he follows you and mirrors you as you pick up your purse and coat and the rest of your shit so you can leave now, right now. “Did he throw up yet?”

“N-no,” Kibum’s sniffles, and you don’t want to imagine it but he sounds so afraid, “I shoved my own two fingers down his throat and nothing’s happening, Minho’s not here and I can’t find Jinki hyung anywhere—  ”

“Relax,” you say, as soothingly as you can, “relax. We’re on our way, we’ll be there in literally less than five minutes, okay? I’m going to hang up and run. Is he conscious?”

“A little, but he’s pale as fuck and I’m scared he’ll pass out for real.”

“Okay, we’ll call an ambulance after we check on him, okay? I’ll be there in five, we’ll be there in five.”

You’ve never been the running type, so Jonghyun is mighty impressed at the way you match his gazelle pace to the frat house. Your breathing stays even because it’s too cold for you to breathe in through your mouth, and even though your lungs hurt when you turn that final little curve and you can see the front door of the Sigma Mu house, you don’t care. 

He’s fine, right? He’s probably fine. He’s fine, Taemin’s fine, he’s better at holding his liquor than most of the frat boys, too, he probably just needs to puke and pass out, or puke and drink some water and eat something fatty. And if he can’t puke, someone out here has got to have activated charcoal. Hell, you do, you have activated charcoal at your dorm room and that’s fucked up but you’re really into DIY skincare lately and that’s why yours and Taemin’s skin look as flawfree as they do and that’s why he’ll be fine, Taemin won’t die, not on your fucking watch—  

The front doors of the house are open, spilling with people that are as drunk as they could be because tonight was their last midterm exam or project and they want to relieve stress, and you’re not too aggressive in the way you move past them to get to the staircase and go up to his new room because he wouldn’t be anywhere else, right?

And from the corner of your eyes, you still manage to find him. 

When even Kibum couldn’t, you spot the blinding aura of that laugh before you hear it, and you can see it work its magic on the all too familiar features of one of your classmates. She’s actually the cream of the crop among the Vocal Performance freshmen, Park Sunyoung, and you want to feel something about the way she looks at Jinki but you can’t right now, you can’t do anything right now because Taemin,  _Taemin_. 

So you run faster, jump the stairs two at a time and Jonghyun gets ahead of you because he actually knows which room is Taemin’s, and he pushes that door open almost like he wanted to tear it down and you see them both, you see them — 

“I’m sorry.”

Taemin is on his feet, and he looks pretty drunk but there’s pink on his cheeks and his hands, and you look up to find fairy lights that match yours on the walls, his new bed has Prussian blue linens and he put up glow in the dark stars and a couple planets on his side of the ceiling now that you see better, he’s fine and everyone’s fine. You don’t see Minho in the bed next to his and you don’t see Kibum either, but you hear Jonghyun groan so he probably is on his way to go beat him to a pulp for scaring him out of his wits—  

“I’m so sorry.” When Taemin’s arms extend in your direction, you breathe. You feel. You’re angry but you’re too relieved to act on it now, you’re too relieved so you walk into his arms, squeeze him closer to you without really meaning to and let him throw you both onto his bed— 

Great. You’re crying. You’re clutching onto this boy’s lithe body and you are actually sobbing. 

“Why would you do that? The fuck is wrong with you?” but you won’t let him go yet, and he laughs as his arms wrap tighter around your waist, too, and his lips press against your collarbones. 

“I was actually totally belligerent, but I puked and brushed my teeth and it was fine, I just need water and maybe some food later,” you’re crying a bit harder and Taemin holds you closer, “I’m sorry, I’m okay, okay?”

“Kibum said you were half-dead,” you whimper, pausing to hiccup once, twice, “I thought I was going to have to make you drink activated charcoal, Taemin.”

Taemin knows why this kind of thing makes you this weak, this sad, this scared, but he doesn’t want to talk about it all that much right now. Maybe he was wrong to have gotten so fucked up to the point where he actually blacked out; he doesn’t remember telling Kibum to get you to come here but he’s pretty sure it happened, pretty sure that’s why Kibum took the liberties he took. But later, he can deal with all that later, and he shushes you and your sobs eventually quiet down, and you calm down enough so that when Kibum walks up to the room, you don’t want to kill him. 

You want to hurt him, badly, but you don’t want to kill him. 

“How was it? Do you think I can audition for Broadway next fall?” 

Taemin throws a cushion at the elder, and it hits him right in the face before Kibum pouts. 

“I’m sorry, too,” he comes over to sit at the edge of the bed, “Jinki hyung told me your absentee boytoy was in town and I wanted to get you away from him. And Taemin actually did black out and I did have to shove my fingers down his throat. He kept crying about how you weren’t here and tried to call you right before he passed out,” and here he points an accusing finger at Taemin, “so technically, all of this is his fault.”

“Congratulations,” you sit up, sniffling when Taemin finally releases you and patting your tears dry with the tips of your fingers, “I almost had a heart attack and you made me cry like a newborn. I hope you’re happy.”

“I’m on the couch for the rest of the week,” Kibum adds quickly, just to assure you that he is being punished, “so don’t hate me, okay?” 

“Then don’t be a shit to me!” you exclaim quickly, your voice still thin from crying. “And give me some eyeliner so I can fix the mess on my face.”

Kibum all but stands to attention, ready to fulfill the task and heading for the door. 

“Also, get me your Nat Shermans!” 

“Yes ma’am!” 

Kibum quickly returns with both items, the eyeliner and the pack of cigarettes, and he watches in awe as you wing your eyeliner back to its glory using your phone screen as a mirror. How were you a crying mess less than five minutes ago?

How do you still look kind of ethereal with your eyes all red and puffy like that?

“Okay,” you sniffle as you finish up, “I’m going to get Kibum to bring you a litre of water, and you are going to drink it,” you look at Taemin sternly enough to make his smile drop. “And then I’m going to go get really drunk off your booze and leave your ass to its own devices.”

“Please don’t leave my ass to its own devices.”

You laugh before you can stop yourself, mostly because, okay, you kind of do want to stay here with him, but you can’t tell him that. So you rise from your spot on the bed without another word, and you wait for Kibum to stand as well before you make your way out of the room. 

“You’ll come back, right? You wouldn’t have me sleeping alone here, right??” but you’re already gone, and Taemin falls back on his bed with the tiniest smile as he pictures you going down the stairs to wind down and he feels extra guilty about Kibum pranking you. 

But he’s glad you’re here now.

The party feels completely different now that you’re sure your best friend isn’t dying upstairs, and you find yourself swaying to the muffled sound of the downtempo [m](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DHCXW-Wbfn4U&t=YTI3N2RiMDc3YjY3NDU0YjQ1ZWQ4NmVjNzE0YzU3OGNkOWJmYmRiYSxaN0hHMVM0eg%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F156963618933%2Ftessellate-t&m=1)usic playing from the living room as you head for the kitchen, Kibum trotting steadily behind you. As you’d preached, you grab a few of the biggest glasses in the pantries and fill them with water, commanding Kibum to take them upstairs one by one till you’re sure Taemin has enough water to piss away everything he’s drunk in the past week. You obviously take a shot of tequila for every glass you send up, and once Kibum’s off with the final glass, you head to the backyard hoping to the heavens there’s no one out there making out or doing some other drunk stupid shit. You’re craving a cig and you really don’t want to deal with anyone for the rest of the night. 

But the high pitched giggles you hear as soon as you step outside obviously prove you’ve run out of good fortune for the next decade. 

It’s not two seconds after you’ve stepped out to the yard that Lee Jinki makes eye-contact with you, and the bitter smile that blossoms on your face does very little to show just how fantastically petty you feel about the entirety of tonight. And just as quickly as you stepped out, you step back in to the mess of the party. 

You totally hear him follow behind you, but do you acknowledge him? Nope. 

The living room is especially lively right now, you’re pretty sure that’s Shin Hoseok and Choi Minho shirtless and doing  _oh, wow okay, body shots_! 

Time for you to do body shots. Minho gives you an all too knowing look when he catches the way you eye him and the newbie and he beckons you over. You gladly follow. 

“Does your little friend know you’re out here doing this?”

“ _Shh_ ,” but he’s giggling, “vodka or tequila?”

More tequila? You can see Jinki from the corner of your eye, he’s weaving through the small crowd surrounding the tall sophomore to get to you and you don’t really want to deal with him right now. 

So, yes. Yes, more tequila. 

You point at the bottle of Jose Cuervo Hoseok’s holding up for you, and you start to tie a messy bun at the top of your head. 

If you’ve learned anything tonight, it’s that you should always expect fuckboy frat bros to be fuckboy frat bros. So you walk up to Hoseok and help him onto his back, watch as Kim Jongin comes out of nowhere to line salt up the fellow newbie’s navel and place a lime wedge between his collarbones. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” he tells you, grinning because he’d worked on a duet with you for the Sound Design I final last semester and you actually really like him. “Never pegged you for a frat party kind of girl.” 

“You obviously haven’t paid enough attention,” you respond, matching his coy tone, “and neither have I. Didn’t even know you were pledging.”

“Are you glad or sad?”

“Glad,” Jongin yells at you about there being people waiting to go next, and Hoseok winks at you just before the younger pours tequila down the pale boy’s clearly ridiculous abs. 

It’s quite a sight even to Kibum from the top of the staircase, the way your head dips, sucks and licks up the tequila running down the ripples in the boy’s abdomen up to the trail salt just below his collarbone. The final bite down on the lime wedge on his collarbones cue hollers all around the living room. Minho tries to convince you to take another shot off of him and you burst out laughing, and Kibum grins wider when he spots Jinki tucked into a corner of the room, watching with all too sober eyes and blatantly ignoring the chatty brunette at his side. 

Maybe he shouldn’t worry about your absentee boytoy all that much. 

You reject the offer to lick up Minho’s skin, but you do invite him to take a shot with you, and one shot becomes two, three, and you can’t feel your hands and you really need to smoke a cigarette so soon enough you’re making your way out to the backyard again. Why did you not come out here in the first place? You can’t even remember, you must be pretty fucking drunk but hey, after the night you’ve had…  

Kim Wonshik and two of Taemin’s closest friends are out here, and you join their little circle after they wave you over. They’re all awfully nice, Wonshik and Kim Moonkyu and Lee Hongbin, and offer you a few hits of their spliff after they light your cigarette for you and hand you a shot of soju. 

Yay. More mixing. You don’t really have to be alive tomorrow, anyway. 

The winter makes your cigarette almost feathery light, and it only adds to the already tickly buzz you feel in every inch of your skin. Maybe you’re going overboard, maybe you try to talk yourself out of smoking weed when Wonshik first passes you the spliff, but you just want to disconnect for at least two hours. 

And disconnect you do.

By the time the spliff is done you’re appropriately crossfaded, though not in a bad way, and you suddenly really miss Taemin, you really miss your bed, and you’re really hungry. Your brain-to-mouth filtre naturally doesn’t work anymore and Hongbin and Wonshik laugh in unison when you voice the comment out loud. 

And as soon as the laughter subsides, the munchies spread. 

“We should get junk food.”

“I want pizza.”

“Man, I’d kill for some chicken nuggets.”

“Or donkatsu. Fuck, donkatsu is so good.”

“Taemin loves donkatsu!” you perk up instantly, there’s a 24-hour Japanese place right outside campus and Taemin’s obsessed with their donkatsu ramen and it probably wouldn’t hurt his stomach to have that right now (and you wouldn’t mind a bowl yourself), and your little clique quickly agrees that this is how the night is going to end. Donkatsu ramen in Taemin’s and Minho’s room and a collective pass out session ‘till morning.

Except you don’t quite make it that far. 

Minho is still shirtless and too burly when you see him stampede towards you, and you’re as surprised as when you first spot him when he runs up to you and grips at your hips and lifts you in the air. He twirls you twice before your forearms are rested on his shoulders, and you want to ask him what, what he’s up to and why, but he laughs and it’s so harmonious and bright that you forget to. 

Is Minho high? You don’t think you’ve ever seen his eyes this red, maybe these people finally did manage to hotbox the fuck out of him so that he’s actually high, that’d be hilarious. “Where are you going? Come play with us!”

He looks helpless and clueless, and your buzz and munchies are way too intense for you to handle it right now.

“Unless you’re playing at KFC or that Japanese joint right outside of campus, you can put me down right now.” 

Minho looks up at you and he’s completely lost, he looks like a clueless rom-com actor caught in a bad comedy he clearly isn’t prepared for and you pinch both his cheeks because you can’t help yourself. He blinks eleven times before he can think of something to say out loud, and you’re giggling even before he’s opened his mouth. “Should we get your coat?” 

An angel even when he’s fucked up, bless him. 

You can tell that the eyes around you are staring. And not all of them with good will. You get it, Minho is too handsome and it’s weird to see him act so familiarly with someone like you, no matter how much of a good guy he is. But you don’t feel all that guilty about the way ties his hands on your tailbone, how he looks straight up at you the entire time that he treks over to the entryway closet at the frat house, giggling throughout most of it because you’re pretty tonight and everything’s so pretty tonight. He looks especially bright once he finally puts you down by the front door. 

“Shouldn’t I go with you?” he asks for the tenth time, and you really do wonder if he’s crossfaded and that’s why he’s being so damn helpless, why he’s extra adorable. 

“Are you hungry?”

“Not really. I ate everything in the fridge like, fifteen minutes ago.” He’s really adorable, you should stop looking at him. So you do, you give him a final smile and turn around because he can follow you if he wants, he can not if he doesn’t; you’re actually getting hungry because all you’ve eaten in the past six hours is some croissants and you need real food. 

You’re almost a whole twenty yards away from the house when you hear the front door open and close again, though all you hear is your footsteps on the grass and Hongbin’s and Wonshik’s. 

Then there are a pair behind you, hurried, almost as if they’re ready to sprint. And then a hand grabs at your elbow, and everything stops. 

You turn around, and the other boys do, too, and their eyes go wide with definite surprise when they catch Lee Jinki’s stony gaze. 

“Two minutes,” is all he says, and he pulls your arm to will you to come closer, he doesn’t want this conversation to be heard by anyone. You don’t know why you don’t resist, not even when your back is literally against the walls of the frat house. 

“What?”

He looks both wasted and sober, but his eyes betray the lines around his lips that tell you that he’s been laughing, smiling, talking. They tell an entirely different story. And once again you’re curious, flattered, more curious and daring. Like you were that night. 

“Please.” His voice is soft but it makes even the air you’re breathing tense, you don’t like it when he’s so straight forward. The silence that falls between you serves as the breath of fresh reality neither of you are really willing to take right now. But you have to. 

So you nod.

“Why are you avoiding me?”

“I’m not avoiding you.”

“I caught you looking at me. I literally saw you and you saw me. And you bolted.”

You sigh, and he rolls his eyes to get his gaze away from you. But it comes back, sparking with a fire you do not recognise.

“I thought you weren’t coming.”

He sounds like he’s been wanting to pick this bone for a while, and you laugh. 

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Why, because you have a boyfriend you can’t wait to go home to?” he adds, and you want to be surprised but you’re not, so your smile doesn’t disappear completely.

“I would be home with him,” he’s so high right now that your voice sounds extra melodic and it’s hella distracting though he’s still a little annoyed. “I really would be, if  _someone_  hadn’t neglected their duties and looked after their new pledges, one of which got blackout drunk and almost got alcohol poisoning tonight.”

You’re even more dramatic, even more immature than Kibum, but you feel that he deserves it. 

“What? Who’s blackout drunk? Who has alcohol poisoning?”

Panic, it’s not good when he’s been smoking because it makes him irrationally anxious, his every nerve ending is already starting to tingle in the worst way and he wishes there was more light out here so he could see you better, corner you better, feel the weight of your anger better.

“The only person I would stick around this fucking house for!” you don’t mean to sound so mad but you are angry, you really are, and it’s all directed at him and you’re not sure why. “You should be grateful that me and Kibum give enough fucks to actually take care of the shit you’re supposed to be taking care of!”

And so the anxiety turns into anger, he’s not freaked out anymore, now he can feel that your every word is a direct attack on him, on his pride. 

“Are you seriously pissed at me right now? For having fun at my own fucking party?”

Holy shit, you’re both fuming. Your blood is boiling and you can see rage taint the twinkle in his eyes, too, and for some reason it makes you smile. 

“You’d expect the frat President and the VP to have some sense of fucking responsibility, wouldn’t you?” this has nothing to do with that, you’re not sure why you’re so pissed off but once the words come out you start to feel better, refreshed, less inhibited. “But over in the living room, we have the VP running around without a shirt on with absolutely no idea what his little has been through tonight, and the frat President making heart eyes at a clueless freshman!”

“Oh,  _wow_ ,” he scoffs because he can’t believe you’re in this predicament right now. Either you’re both really drunk or you’re both just really bitter. “Do you really want to go there with me?”

“Aren’t you ashamed of the fact that  _your little_  was the one that ended up taking care of Taemin? While you were out here trying to get into someone’s pants?”

“I thought you said you weren’t a jealous person.”

“The fuck does this have to do with jealousy?! Are you not listening to a word I’m saying?” you spit right back but it still stings, the way he looks at you like he’s not taking you at all seriously, and you want to hit him. 

“We literally just met tonight.”

“I don’t care about what you do or who you do it with.”

“Yes, you do.”

God, you really want to hit him.

“Alright, let’s be immature about this, too! Why should I expect you to take responsibility, anyway? Like I give a shit about where you put your—  ” his hand lands on your cheek and you turn your head away immediately, he’s way too warm so you need to not look at him, you don’t need any more weakness. The front door opens and it’s two feet from you and you recognise the light brown head of Park Sunyoung, she’s pulling Kim Sungjoo by the hand and—  

Now, he’s cradling your face. 

And you’re having heart palpitations. 

His forehead brushes yours and your vision is getting blurry, probably because you haven’t blinked since he cornered you and you don’t think you can do it when he’s this close, when he’s looking at you like this. Not when you’re looking at him like this, like he’s a starry night. 

Until he breaches the gap. 

“The only freshman I have heart eyes for is you, asshat.”

You know full well why you don’t push Jinki away even though his hands fall around your neck and down to the small of your back, not even when the tip of his nose brushes past the bridge of your own. He tastes like chaos but also like him, like that scent you caught from him that morning mixed with fire and bitterness and second guesses are nulled because you reciprocate without thinking, without knowing, he knows you have someone and he’s not holding back and neither are you. 

You don’t want to hold back. You want to latch onto him, like you’re starved and tired of caring about what others think of you, caring about your past and your future and anything other than this exact moment. Now, when your hands press at his shoulder blades, his back, your eyes shut in all ways, when you wish you could either disappear or suspend time because even now you’re not sure what you want from him, how you feel about everything that’s going through your brain right now. 

“Stop fighting this,” Jinki breathes into the air you share, one of your hands under his jaw and the other a fist at the collar of his pressed shirt.

His hands are back on your cheeks, and yours follow to land above them, though not to welcome his affection. You need to ward it off. So you look down and will your entire body to resist, to stop, because you don’t want this to affect you any more than it has already. 

“I have to.”

And yet you don’t, not entirely. You don’t know what force it is that compels you to want to keep him close, to breathe him in when he’s not close enough.

Reality. You have to stay in your reality, You can’t stray, you can’t stray now. Let go. You know the right thing to do is to let go, walk away and let go, but you don’t want to. 

And he can tell. 

He can tell, so he only watches as you look back up to Park Sunyoung and use the way she’s smiling at you and him to slither out of his reach, to slip away and away from the house before he can stop you, before anyone can stop you. 

“Her lipstick really is foolproof.” Sunyoung is blushing, her timing may have been unfortunate but she’s beaming at him because it’s been a few hours since they met but she’s already fully aware of what just happened and what it means to this young, careless man. 

Jinki is sheepish too, bringing up nimble fingers to his lips because he can’t believe he told Sunyoung about something so trivial, he can’t believe what just happened, what he just felt, and he can’t help but laugh. He should be running after you right now, but he knows there’s no need. There’s time. 

“Yeah.”

There’s still time. 


	2. Bokeru

>[ _b_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DXupof8OLb88&t=NzdmYTZhZDlkOTc2N2YxZThiNGQwNmQ2M2I4NmRjMjZmMzdkNGJiMCxpaU9TSDgzag%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161569843368%2Fbokeru-m&m=1) _ut I don’t want to feel what I felt when I fell back down_

Avoiding the Sigma Mu boys is easy the first week. You focus on work, on your classes and on your general future and spend most of your time to yourself and it’s okay. The only one of them that you actively still spend time with is Jonghyun because of work, but he’s never been one to fish for drama or to get nosy about your personal stuff, so it’s fine.

It really isn’t cool to see missed calls from Taemin every day, but you can live with it.

The second week is a little harder, it’s harder to avoid Taemin at the halls, in the hundred and fifty three metres that separate the frat house from your dorm building, it’s hard to avoid him when he loiters around the radio station when your show’s on the air.

But you manage. Because you’re done being a pushover, you’re done letting everyone surrounding you talk to you like they know a thing about you. So you’re cooped up in the library whenever you’re not at work or in class, because final project due dates are just around the corner and you have more shit to get done than you’d anticipated and you’re a bit of a mess, though there’s more peace around you than there has been in a long time.

Week three comes around, and you’re particularly weak. Taemin shows up in front of your dorm room and you can’t refuse him, can’t deny him when he asks to bury himself under your covers with you, and you can’t say no because you miss him, you miss spending time with him and it’d be dumb to stay mad at him, at all of this, any longer.

The next night, Kibum’s the one pacing outside the radio station when you get off of work, and you can’t say no to a late dinner and a drink with him, you can’t say no to bar hopping with fake IDs he’d made for you, you can’t say no to passing out cuddled between him and Jjong and a bong in their room that night.

The following morning, Choi Minho grabs you by the arm before you can tip-toe out of the house. He takes you out for brunch and orders one too many pitchers of red sangria and you end up asleep and buried to his side at a movie theatre in a free screening of Gold Diggers of 1933.

Man, you’ll never watch that whole movie in one sitting. But he passes out, too, so it’s kind of okay.

And as you walk home that night after work, you spot Lee Jinki standing around outside your dorm building. A sigh escapes you before you can stop it, you’re not sure if it’s wistful or just lethargic because you really shouldn’t be surprised. Your karmic vibes are being pretty spectacular to you, like they can’t have you not seeing these five faces as often as possible, as if they’re supposed to mean something to you.

The universe seems to be especially stubborn about this one.

You don’t think it ever counts on the fact that you’re also notoriously stubborn. So you don’t acknowledge him.

Not at first.

You keep your poker face on even after you’ve walked past him and towards the promenade across the block, only stopping when you’re a few strides away and can no longer feel him in your immediate vicinity. Glancing over your shoulder, you notice he’s frozen in place, his eyes still on you.

“C’mon.”

He hums, his eyebrows shot up and eyes wide as if to ask you if he heard correctly, and you catch his gaze and wait for him to get it. Which he does, after a second. He almost jumps at the realisation, dipping his hands deeper into that dark wool coat of his before he starts to walk behind you.

These streets are mighty quiet when it’s not finals week or Saturday, and you’re pretty happy about it right now. It scares you, from time to time, how deserted the campus gets in the early evening on a Sunday, when people are either hitting the hay early because they’ve been too damn hungover throughout the day or heading home to prepare for the week. You’re doing exactly none of those things, because your week already started this afternoon.

Park Chanyeol swapped all his shifts with you as of this week, in order to to avoid cute run-ins with his team’s CP and her kitten. This arrangement makes it so you only have to work Sunday (which is always pre-recorded in the afternoon) through Thursday. And you don’t have any Friday classes this semester.

In other words, full-ish weekends. You have them now.

“Were you at the movies?” Jinki asks, because you smell like popcorn and you’re still holding your ticket alongside your wallet out in the open. You laugh and nod, amazed that he has an eye for detail that would catch even this.

“We didn’t do much watching but we were definitely like, 57% there.”

“Who’s we?”

You roll your eyes and lengthen your paces, forcing a bit of distance between you without losing the spunk in the lilt of your step.

“Minho rolled his first joint today,” you digress and don’t, because Jinki won’t find out that you were with him from your mouth. “I taught him well.”

“Are you trying to corrupt my child?” Jinki’s chuckling between words, matching your pace to walk alongside you to find you smiling, too.

“Hey, he needs party tricks to show off to people,” you only meet Jinki’s eyes for seconds before you look back to the promenade coming up ahead. “He even gave me these as compensation for my lessons,” you slip out a pretty standard looking pack of cigarettes to show to him and he laughs again.

Jinki takes them in hand because he knows what they are already, what the reek that rises from the white carton holds: the three thickest joints one could roll without purposefully smoking themselves into oblivion. The blend of forest green and bright, dust of gold coating them, the occasional bunch of yellowish leaves wrapped around long, beige paper, all brought together by a long piece of cardboard you broke off of the top of the cigarette packet to use as a filtre; it all looks kind of beautiful, in a really fucked up way.

“You did teach him well. These look lethal.”

He’s right, this could probably put a man down halfway through even if they balanced it out with tobacco. You burst out laughing before you can stop yourself, and you both come to a halt to look up to the promenade. It’s vast fields of dead green covered by beautiful ashy wood. The sight of it in the last lights of the day makes your laughter dissolve into a more contented sigh.

The campus’s largest frog pond sits quietly beyond you and below you in the summers, to the point where the greying wood of the bridge that runs across it bends and curls so that people can see the water under their feet. From the bridge, you can get low enough to touch it, even though the water’s almost always a swampy colour and freezing cold. In the winter, the pond gets drained, leaving for tiny shallow pools that are frozen enough to slide on, even to walk on (super carefully, though; Taemin almost broke his tailbone here a month ago).

From the high point of the bridge, the wood gets thin but extravagant, and it’s the spot on which street musicians like to perch themselves with saxophones and clarinets and guitars when there’s good weather. Right now, you can actually hear Oh Hyuk killing that geomungo in the dorm building right behind this side of the promenade, you can hear the rest of his boys accompanying him with various types of percussion.

This school really is full of amazing people.

So this piece of campus is usually more than alive, used to prove that everyone who goes here belonged here all along. Even the security that patrols the area twice per night don’t ever feel the need to make the musicians move, instead stopping to listen and liven up their boring routines because this entire school oozes with talent, with ambition, with the promise of a future where there is no shame, only hard work and a chance at success.

You’ve always found solace in solitude, though. Or solitude plus one. Which is why you quite prefer to come here when it’s deserted, like it is now.

It’s the only way you get to walk down under the bridge unbothered by security or other students. By this time of the season, the pond is cleaned right out so that only patches of solid ice collect every now and then, but the dirt is sturdy where you draw a path for Jinki to follow, already pulling out one of the jays and Key’s pack of Nat Shermans.

Right as you go to light the jay, you hear the single, muted strum of a string coming from above the bridge. Then you flick the lighter alive, Jinki looking around the greying marble that covers the bridge with curiosity. The flame touches the sepia coloured paper and burns just as something straight out of your dreams starts to echo down the curve of the bridge from above.

You haven’t heard this [s](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DkHRSjPhBgRE&t=YzliMTc4M2ZhNmE5OTM2YTc3YjZiOGQ1MzQ5ZTA1YzUzNDExM2ZjZCxpaU9TSDgzag%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161569843368%2Fbokeru-m&m=1)ong played like this before, and you guess that’s why your body is overcome with shivers so quickly.

Looks like you’re not the only die-hard Miyazaki fan around here.

So you sway along to the melody and it makes you both giggle through the first half of the joint, and it naturally gets a lot harder to pretend after that’s gone. And so come the questions, mixed between unintentional and intentional huddling because the wind picks up, between nonsensical and entirely sound exchanges of the same nature.

“Is he gone yet?”

Jinki doesn’t have to specify the who in that sentence, not with the way you smile and look away from him using a cigarette as an excuse not to answer. And he gets the hint, matches your grin and lifts his own cigarette to his lips as if to extend the subject without having to press it.

But the song starts to get louder, more melodic, and the high makes it very hard to concentrate on anything but the echo of the strings under this fucking bridge. It sounds mighty beautiful and for the few minutes it lasts and you can’t stop smiling, or looking at him because he’s also in awe, because he’s never heard an arrangement like this before and he’s so glad to have come here.

Especially when you start to sway around the dirt, and he laughs and forgets for a moment that you’re both walking through the thickest, vaguest of fogs and neither of you seems to want to get out.

Until the music stops and the players shuffle away, and he falls to cold, hard ground again.

“When are we going to talk about what happened that weekend?”

If you had any reaction to his words, it doesn’t show on your face.

“He is gone,” you say instead, “I wouldn’t be out here otherwise, would I?”

“Can we not do the whole avoiding confrontation thing? I know you hate it as much as I do.”

“What avoiding? What confrontation?” you take a huge hit of the joint and almost start coughing from the mixture of the burn of cannabis and the burn of the chill in the air. “Holy shit, it’s so cold I feel like my face is going to fall off. Can we walk back?” you don’t wait for an answer, leaving the joint to hang from the corner of your mouth as you stuff your hands in your coat pockets and lead the way back to the dorms.

You don’t expect him to follow, but you know he does.

He’s quiet, though, really quiet, and you think he may finally be growing weary of you and your flaky derelict nature. It makes you feel like you shouldn’t be around him at all, and the usual stroll back to your dorms building picks up in step and in longer and deeper drags of Minho’s joint.

You swear those ten minutes to get to the hall duplicate the high and bring back the simmering bubbles of red wine and fruit that are still swirling around in your brain (and probably in your body, too) and you’re just peachy. Peachy and really craving a rewatch of  _Howl’s Moving Castle_. Any Miyazaki, really; maybe you can double flick it and watch  _Princess Mononoke_  and then  _Howl’s Moving Castle_  because they’re both your favourites right now—  

But you turn a final corner so you’re literally thirty feet away from the dorm doors, and you want to make time stop.

“Wait, let’s smoke one last cigarette,” you don’t wait for an answer from him this time either, your smile sheepish as you skid into the tiny alleyway right by the building. It’s dark, you wouldn’t be standing here if you were alone, but Jinki doesn’t seem to mind as he wordlessly nicks one of your cigarettes and snatches yours, too. He lights them both and hands yours back, watching as you draw lines with the tips of your boots on the pavement and do anything you can to avoid looking at his face.

“Do you just want me to go?”

His eyes are mighty clear when you meet them. All the lines of his face have softened but his expression has hardened, like he’s very, very tired of this, and of everything.

“N-no, why would I want you to go?”

“You clearly don’t want to talk about what we did, so I’m going to assume that it’s because you want to pretend it never happened. I get it if you don’t think about us like that and just didn’t want to tell me to my face.”

“N-no, Jinki, that’s really not it—  ”

“I get it, though! Maybe you were feeling a little caged up because your boyfriend is abroad so often. It’s good that we talk this out now.”

“No, Jinki, I do want to talk but I’m… scared.”

He registers your words only halfway through, and you’re amazed he has a response sitting at the base of his throat despite the look of terror on your face.

“It was just one kiss, I get it. I don’t want to catch feelings, either!” he laughs boisterously and the sound doesn’t feel like his own, it’s too shrill, too foreign. “Is that why you were avoiding me? That’s why, wasn’t it?”

Your expression falls and he notices, expects it, tries to show empathy with how he looks you in the eyes.

“No. I was avoiding this because this… this scares me.”

Your face changes, your mind changes, even the way you’re holding your cigarette is different because he might not see it yet, but the fog is lifting, the illusion dissolving because you’re tired.

You’re tired of the life you’ve lived the past year when you’re not in a radio booth, when you’re not sleeping next to Taemin or at a party, when you’re not drunk or high or wired in class and buried into a sound booth or a practice room.

That’s only half of who you are. The repressed parts of your soul have been dying to push out into the light and Lee Jinki is giving them everything they need to do it whether you like it or not.

“I know,” he comes closer and places his hands on your shoulders, “I know, so don’t worry about it, okay? Let’s pretend it never happened, no one has to know. You’re in a good committed relationship and you don’t want that to go to waste, right? So let’s just pretend this never happened.”

“Jinki… ”

“I’m cool with it!” but he’s not, and he’s not fooling anyone because his eyes are getting red and it’s not from the weed. He’s trying to sound understanding, sympathetic, but he’s tired of hiding, too, he’s tired of holding back. That layer of him that’s harder to break through but even harder to see is starting to come through and you still have no idea and you’re already scared of him so he has to stay back, he has to step back.

“It’s okay if you just want to not get close,” he goes on, voice rising in pitch because he’s lying through his fucking teeth and that’s the telltale sign, so he looks down and away from you. “I’ve done a lot of dumb shit in college but I don’t want to be a homewrecker or anything. We can just be friends, and that’s what should happen because you have a boyfriend that clearly loves you to bits and is always waiting on you—  ”

“Jinki, please— ”

“I mean it! And I know you’re nuts about him, too, and I don’t want to get in the way— ”

“Just listen to me, please.”

“It was fun but we don’t have to take this anywhere— ”

“ _There is no boyfriend_!”

Jinki’s head whips back up to see your eyes with tears swimming in them, colour and high and buzz visibly drained from your face. You’re panting, heavy and shallow at once and you look desperate, so desperate to breathe and really breathe. Your whole body is starting to feel numb and you press your back against the brick wall behind you and you heave a sigh.

“My boyfriend…” now you really can’t look him in the eyes, you can’t face him because it’s coming, the bad is coming to take over you and you don’t want him to see. “My boyfriend is dead.”

“I… what?”

What the fuck is he supposed to say?

“He’s dead. My boyfriend died last year.”

You can’t believe how relieving it is to step into the clarity, this silvery light that’s been avoiding you since September, this little piece of sanity that you’ve tried so hard to hold on to, and now it’s finally holding you, too.

“He used to live in this dorm right here,” you chuckle but it’s soulless and you tap the palm of your free hand against the brick wall behind your back before taking a long drag of your cigarette. And like you always do, you remember his messy head of hair that weekend you came up from your hometown, just a week before it happened, how he insisted that you’re so loved, that you’re so beautiful and that’s why you’ll never be contained, and the way he said it made it so you still believe it just a little bit today. It’s why you’ve never been bitter, why you still hold on to him and his memory and the way his body used to feel beside yours, holding yours.

But things have started to change. You’ve started to change.

“He left me a note and snuck out to the rooftop… and he… ” can you say it? You finally look up to Jinki’s eyes and they’re glistening with the lights from the lamp posts around you, and his gaze is both fearful and welcoming and you know you have to do this, you have to do this or you’ll never be truly okay again. “He jumped.”

Jinki opens his mouth to say something, fails and shuts it back up, but tries again because your whole face is turning dull, everything about you is heartbreaking but so unbelievably pure and he just wants… he just wants to hold you.

“And in the note,” you sniffle and feel the first set of warm tears trickle down your face, “can I tell you what he wrote in that note?”

He shouldn’t, he shouldn’t want to know because he has triggers, too, everyone has triggers, but he wants to hold you so badly right now. So he doesn’t answer at all, he leaves it up to you to share.

“‘Of all people and in all worlds, I want you to be happy always.’”

Suddenly it starts to come back to Jinki, the sophomore student from last year that shocked the entire city just around the end of the spring semester. How the whole institution shut down for a few days after that to hold vigils and a memorial in his honour. How Health and Wellness hosted several meetings to raise awareness and give support to students struggling with depression; a call to action to those who hadn’t been ready to seek counsel, to ask for help.

The name escapes him but it doesn’t matter, because he can vaguely remember Minho talking about being in classes with him, he can remember other students saying that he’d been bright, that he’d been struggling.

And Jinki tried to join in on the rampant positivity in that atmosphere after things settled, the one where the boy’s memory inspired so many to seek out help and acknowledge how they feel. Because he inspired so many to want to fight, so many to want to fight for his memory and in his honour, to understand themselves and each other and know that there are no easy ways to be happy, there is no romance in sadness. The idea of chasing the promise of greener grass and fresher air was so, so beautiful and totally within Lee Jinki’s reach…

But he couldn’t. He wasn’t ready. Yet now, watching you try to pretend like things are okay when they’re not, even after all this time they’re not… maybe he’s ready now.

“And because of that note… I don’t know. I felt like he never left me. Through it all he always told me to fight my demons even if I didn’t want to, and that’s why I think I can’t let go of him,” you’re pressing your lips together to try and hold in all of this, because his eyes have watered and you don’t think you’ve ever seen a face more heartbreaking than his right now.

“And I’ve tried so hard to be okay like this!” you even throw in a laugh, and the corners of his mouth perk up just for a moment. “It’s so fucked up how bad my denial can get, but I just can’t, I don’t know how else to deal.”

You weren’t okay at all, were you? Jinki can see it now, how sitting in his living room surrounded by the other bros you were hiding behind a thin veil, nothing strong enough to liken a shield, but subtle enough of a mask to fool even the keenest people.

“I was just so scared, all the time. I was so scared that I was going to end up replacing him, forgetting him, and I didn’t want that. All last semester I couldn’t keep up with anything except work because I couldn’t tell anyone, I couldn’t tell anyone that I’m the girl he left behind, that I was the one crying my eyes out at the vigil the school had for him last year— ” you sob, and now more than ever, Jinki is grateful that he never ran into you until that night at the frat house, he’s so glad he didn’t know you then, didn’t feel what he does now then.

He gives you a pause, space to breathe, and you take it.

“And then Lee Taemin came into my damn life and before I knew it I’d told him everything.”

Fuck, of course. The ties that bind you and him are so much more than they appear to be.

“Things got better after that, but I was still convinced that I failed him, that I could have done something or said something,” your irises are shaking and so are your hands so you smoke more, you smoke the bit of the joint left and you take a drag of your cigarette and you try to feel alive because the beating heart in front of you is bruised but it’s beautiful and you don’t want to stain it, you don’t want to stain him.

But you also can’t stop your words anymore.

“I still feel like I break everything I touch, so I don’t want to touch anything,” here comes your sardonic laughter again and Jinki thinks he might cry for real now.

Until you meet his eyes and register his expression, until your own face starts to soften into the girl he woke up with that morning, the girl whose lips he stole for just a little bit and he thinks selfishly that you shine when you see him. And that’s why he doesn’t believe you, not right now.

“It was easy to lie at that first party, because you had no idea who I was or where the fuck I’d come from,” you’re chuckling again but your cheeks are still wet, “I thought meeting you was going to be just something cordial, because Key’s your little and I’m Key’s friend, right?”

He nods, empathises, nods again and comes around to rub his hands up and down your upper arms slowly, just to get you to stop shaking. He’s not sure if even you’d noticed but you’re mighty grateful for the way he takes the inertia of your mind and body and coerces it into warmth and comfort. His touch makes you think about cicadas in the summer and you’re exhausted, you’re too exhausted not to lean into him because he’s way closer than he should be and you’re way weaker than you should be and you…

You just want to give up now.

“Obviously, something went wrong. The moment I woke up that morning, I forgot to be afraid. And I think it’s because I couldn’t pretend anymore and… because I was happy.”

You sigh with finality before you pull back to meet his eyes again, and there’s nothing in your face but relief, affection and just the tiniest bit of pride.

“So there,” the tears won’t stop coming down but they don’t weaken your voice, “that’s why I don’t want to talk about what happened. Apparently, I like you, and because I like you, I want to look out for you. If you stick with me, I guarantee that I will ruin your life.”

He’s in tears when he knots his hands at your tailbone, sniffling because he doesn’t want to make a sound when he steps closer. The contact makes your voice catch and your body tense but he doesn’t mind, you don’t have to say any more. He pushes you fully against him but doesn’t make you reciprocate, instead he rests his chin on your shoulder and waits.

He waits till you start to cry properly.

“You’re not going to ruin my life.”

“My track record is pretty good,” it’s all muffled because your face is smooshed against the shoulder of his coat, but he hears you, he can always hear you.

“You’re talking to the guy who takes way too many kids under his wing because he has some severe abandonment issues and hosts the most disgusting parties because he can’t commit to anything that’s not related to work or the frat,” holy shit he’s saying it, he’s actually saying it to another soul and he wonders if you can tell what he feels right now. “You’re not going to ruin me.”

“Why are you always so upfront?” it’s annoying especially right now, that he’s so sincere that it takes away your desire to wallow in self-deprecation and grief.

“Because you make me happy, too.”

He waits till you wrap your arms around his shoulders fully, unreservedly, before he takes a breath and keeps going.

“You don’t have to be scared anymore.”

The words echo between your temples fifteen more times before they sink in, before you hold Lee Jinki like you should have that morning and you cry the tears you’ve been holding back for eleven months and three weeks,  you don’t know if you believe him but you desperately want to. Because your heart’s beating so fast you finally feel alive, because there’s nothing left for you to hide, nothing left for you to resent, to repress, nothing to thwart your smiles and replace them with tears, because…

“ _You don’t have to be scared anymore._ ”

 

> _[y](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DowHTuZsS7hg&t=MzUzMjAwOTlhNmM1NGE2NWJhMTExMDQ5MDk5NjQ5YTZkMWZkNTkwMCxpaU9TSDgzag%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161569843368%2Fbokeru-m&m=1)ou give me space to pretend that all of my demons are friends_

You can’t sleep. It’s why Jinki wakes up alone the next morning, his body cold and his eyes puffy. But he understands, he understands because last night was just the tip of the iceberg and you weren’t ready to deal with that yet. He pushed all of this repressed emotion out of you and he has to wait for you to be ready to keep going.

And he sure hopes that you do want to keep going.

He waits all afternoon for a call, a text, a message from Taemin saying that you’re fine, better, but nothing comes. Rehearsals are getting longer, his last finals are fast approaching and he keeps getting surprise visits from playwrights and directors at the Opera House.

So sleep evades him, too, and even that keeps him from going to the radio station, sneaking into PMA department events, walking around that promenade at night in hopes of finding you under that bridge.

Suddenly it’s the end of the week, and Jinki has lost count of how many times he’s called, texted, asked about you.

But he hasn’t lost hope.

He isn’t usually awake on Sunday mornings, but he rolls out of bed at 7am with a surprising amount of energy and decides that today, he runs. Today, he runs ‘till he’s out of breath and has a real excuse for feeling like he’s choking on the inside, because he can’t blame his ridiculous anxiety anymore.

It’s not that you don’t like him, it’s that you’re scared of the fact that you’re moving on. And that’s okay. He can’t hold it against you.

He’s scrolling through his phone for the weather when he sees it. An email from the dean of the PMA department.

_One year later and we will still honour his memory. Students are invited to pay their respects where he’s been lain to rest, at—_

Okay, then, rain check on that run.

It’s probably way too early for you to be here but you couldn’t wait one more minute. This is the only time where you can sit here unbothered; it’ll probably be three hours before you see another soul around this place.

You’re still as terrified now as you were the first time you walked this wet grass, except maybe you feel a bit more peace in here. Back then, you couldn’t even stand ten feet from this spot. And today you’re knelt before the grey stone you’ve avoided since September and you’re actually smiling.

Things really have changed.

You nestle the bouquet of gardenias you’d brought closer to your chest, reluctant to place them in the starkingly empty space in front of you. Because there’s something you need to do before that.

“I’m sorry.”

You’d never said it out loud before, not to him. You’d said it to your therapist, your loved ones, his loved ones. To yourself, you’d said it. Sorry for not being strong enough, old or experienced enough to understand that you never had the power to change a thing about what happened. Sorry for holding on, sorry for not holding on.

“I’m sorry.”

Sorry because you think about him too much, sorry because you don’t think about him enough. Sorry because you feel something you shouldn’t for someone you shouldn’t feel a thing for, sorry because you still feel what you felt for someone who’s no longer there to feel a thing for. Sorry because you’re already starting to cry because you’re sad, sorry for crying because you feel guilty.

“I’m—  ”

Rustling, a rush of black in your peripheral vision and he’s kneeling next to you. Your first thought is that black suits him too well, from the coal in his suit to the coal in his hair; it contrasts prettily against his skin. And now you feel sorry for feeling lighter, sorry for feeling guiltier.

“What are you doing here?”

Jinki wipes the palms of his hands on his dress pants, a bit irked at how the damp soil on his knees makes him feel extra cold. He avoids your eyes and looks straight ahead at the grey stone, at the name engraved there, at the weight in the air that separates you and him from the reality you’ve been so hesitant to face. And he takes a deep breath.

“You punk!”

Your eyes widen at how loud Jinki’s voice is, how a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth even though this is probably the most inappropriate place for that, for whatever it is he’s trying to do—

“Stop making her cry!” his smile curves to look like the ones he gives Taemin and Kibum when they’re being mischievous. “If I didn’t respect you for who you’ve been to her, I’d threaten to punch you in the face for making me see her cry so much.”

“Wh-what are you doing?”

Jinki finally reaches out for you, his hand landing on your own, the one that’s been resting on your thigh, before he meets your eyes for just a moment. And then his gaze is back on the stone.

“She misses you. She remembers you. And she doesn’t want to let go, not even after I tried to pull her away from you. Sorry about that, by the way. My bad.”

Your eyes are burning, his voice is too real and you don’t know why he’s doing this, if it’s for your sake or his own but this alone makes your whole heart swell with pain, with relief, you can’t even tell anymore.

“We never met but I think you can already tell I am a selfish prick and a pretty tenacious one, too. We’ve only known each other a few weeks, but I already want to make promises I might not even be able to keep.”

Jinki clears his throat and you stifle a whimper, and he finally looks over at you fully. He’s got the tiniest smile on his face and he leans over to you just a little, reaching out a hand to cup your cheek and swipe the trail of tears there dry with his thumb.

“And I’m not the only one.”

It’s only after he goes quiet that you hear them, the footsteps. More rustling around you, more flashes of black and the occasional white, and before you know it, Taemin, Kibum, Minho and Jonghyun are kneeling beside you, across from you. And you’re crying again, you keep crying, why are you crying so much?

“W-why are you all here?”

“Because of all people and in all worlds, I want to protect you always,” Taemin starts off, looking you straight in the eyes like he’s been rehearsing this for ages, “to the best of my ability. Sometimes it’ll be too much, but you love me so it’ll be okay.”

You look to him and cry harder, grateful and embarrassed and so happy, your chest is bursting with new light and you don’t know what to do with it. Now more than ever you’re sure you’d been waiting your entire life to meet Taemin and you hope you never have to live a day without him.

“And I want to be your comfort always. But I might give you a hard time occasionally.” Jonghyun’s voice is thick, he had no idea about anything and this is probably killing him just as bad as it is killing you.

You don’t deserve this, you don’t deserve a friend like Jonghyun, you don’t deserve a friend like him that cares way too much for his own good and shines so much that he’s blinding. And you lace his fingers with your own, smiling when he squeezes your hand because he knows what you’re thinking, and you know that he feels nothing but love for you right now and that’s why he’s crying.

“I… I want to make sure you cry only because you’re watching one of those sappy melos you love,” Kibum is sniffling and he can barely get two words out without hiccupping, “or if you’re drunk binging on Miyazaki movies.”

Then he can’t handle it anymore and he’s sobbing, bent over till his face is between his knees and Jonghyun has to pat a hand down his back because it’s okay, it’s okay not to have known. And you reach out to him, too, and when he throws his arms around you, you can’t do anything but smile. Because you’re sad, grateful and happy all at once.

“We’re going to thrive,” Minho’s eyes are teary but his voice is firm when Kibum’s quieted and his head is on your shoulder; Minho is rigid and you’re so proud to know him right now, so happy that he’s here and that he’s always been there. “Even if I have to carry your butt to class or to rehearsal. Sometimes thriving will require winding down which might involve some less than legal stuff but we’ll never get sidetracked. Or in trouble.”

Kibum sits back up when Minho reaches an arm out towards you, then the elder basically flings you off your spot and into his arms because he can’t wait anymore. His embrace isn’t sorrowful, it’s just meant to tell you that he’s here, physically and spiritually with you, that you’re safe. Taemin butts in on the exchange to kiss your temple, the top of your head, to rub a hand against your back and eventually to let you know that there’s one last thing to be said here.

When you sit back up, Lee Jinki is smiling.

“I just want you to be happy,” he laughs fully, hand steady and soft on your face and eyes dead set on yours. “As lovers, as friends, competitors, colleagues… as whatever the six of us end up being, I want you to be happy always, too. And I’d like to be there to see it happen.”

He gives you a moment, watches your eyes fill with that something he’d seen in you since you stepped out to his backyard that fateful night, that something that truly allows him to rest assured that this, and everything, will be okay.

You move to place the bouquet of gardenias in the grass before the stone, and you take a moment to look at him, really look at him. You feel where you are, where you’ve been all these months, what you’ve seen and experienced, what you’ve felt. The people you’ve met and those who’ve brushed past you, the lessons you’ve learned.

You can let go now. You will carry the memories always, you will carry his smile, his words, his strength with you always. And you will let go of the bad, of the fog, of the fear.

You will let go.

 

>[ _y_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DqqvXNVcsqSQ&t=MWZiZmJkYWMzMGY1NjI3NDFkMDFlZTM3ODk3MTk2MTllNzc4NjgzYixpaU9TSDgzag%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161569843368%2Fbokeru-m&m=1) _ou kill everything you touch, but in a good way_

“Thank you.”

You’re not sure how long you’ve been lying here, silently and contentedly, trapped under the twenty seven blankets Jonghyun and Minho spread all over the living room after rearranging all of the furniture to make for the best blanket fort anyone can build in fifteen minutes.

They brought the bong in, too, and the fairy lights from Taemin’s and Minho’s room and one of Jonghyun’s aromatherapy diffusers to turn this into a real den of what you like to believe is the purest form of friendship. Kibum and Jonghyun are very passed out a few feet from you, the former’s leg tied around the latter’s hips like a rope so Jonghyun looks extra tiny. Taemin is sprawled like a starfish a little ways away, his foot inches from Choi Minho’s face, who’s been sleep talking for the past twenty minutes and you’ve almost burst out laughing several times from how hilariously adorable he is.

Lee Jinki lies mirroring your position, and his eyes are wide open and on you like he’s been waiting to have this conversation. And you’re certain he has. “Go ahead, ask me.”

It’s like he can read your mind, how clear your face looks since he saw you this morning. There was always something vague about you whenever he saw you before this morning, but all blurs are gone now.

Judging by the way you’re looking at him right now, it looks like he’s clearer, too.

“Why?”

You’re smiling through the question, because you never would have expected him to care, you never would have expected him to want to walk through this with you, even push through this with you. And you know it can’t all be because of the tension, the magnetism that both separates you and pulls you together.

So, why?

“You won’t cry anymore, right?”

“You won’t make me cry, right?”

“Just don’t cry. Or I’ll get haunted.”

“Okay.”

He smiles, and it fades too quickly for your comfort.

“I went to a performing arts high school,” he’s looking you straight in the eyes, his voice so low and deep that it forces you to scoot closer to him. “When I was a senior, my favourite class was dance. I was on the ballet track.”

You perk up because you’re surprised, because you shouldn’t be, and he presses his lips together stop from smiling. There’s warmth on his cheeks and he hopes they’re not too red, though he has very little hope for his ears.

Okay, it’s okay. Keep going.

“It wasn’t my favourite because I was good at it,” he’ll never say it out loud but the truth is he wasn’t half bad, either, he was just better at singing. He’s always been better at using his voice. “I liked it because ballet is pretty, and so was the instructor.”

You nod and it makes him really nervous, though not enough to break eye-contact. It’s okay, Jinki. Keep going.

“I never made a move because I didn’t want to overcomplicate my existence, but that whole year I was really, really confused. Because I’d never had a crush on someone that was older than me.”

You nod again, and he knows you’re paying attention and that you’re waiting for the ball to drop, but he purses his lips again and crosses his ankles and tries to not look like he’s kind of scared about where this is going. Though he knows you can see it through it all, and you do. Which is why you press him on with your eyes.

“Or, you know, a boy.”

Your first reaction does not include wide eyes or a gasp, there’s not a hint of shock on your features. Instead, you smile. And you reach out for his hand to hold it in your own and move just a little bit closer.

Jinki thinks that’s why he can still breathe.

“My girlfriend at the time… did not take it well. I didn’t think it was a big deal to ignore gender when it came to any kind of relationship, not even romantic ones, but she was convinced that I was just pulling the gay card to get her to break up with me. Which she did, when I confessed that I was very bi before I met her and very bi every day after that,” Jinki laughs when you laugh and it comes out surprisingly easily, and he thinks this is getting easier. “The dynamics of sexuality have always been kind of lost on me so I didn’t really consider it being a secret, but apparently, it was a big deal.”

“I’ll bet,” your voice isn’t sarcastic, it’s not mocking, it’s genuinely understanding and just a little cheeky. You give his hand a squeeze and he can actually smile, his chest feels lighter already.

“Word got out and I was bullied for like, a solid two months. After that, everyone remembered it was senior year and that they had no time to care about me, but I started spending less time in the cafeteria and more time in the dance studios.”

“I wonder who was in there with you.”

Jinki laughs harder, pulling on your hand so you tumble a little.

“By the time graduation came, I was properly in love with him. And I’d also applied and been accepted to this school, where he was a student.”

Here your eyes do widen, though only for a moment. And your smile starts to fade.

“Fast forward to my first college party as a college student. He was hosting. And serving all of my drinks. So I got very, very drunk. I was so drunk that I decided it was time to confess. And I did.”

Jinki’s breathing quickens, he catches himself trying to avoid your eyes and decides he can’t, he shouldn’t, not even when his throat starts to ache. So he takes a deep breath, exhales, inhales again.

“It was very, very awkward. But he found it cute, so he said he’d give us a go.”

His eyes spring to yours when your hand starts to card through his hair. With a light shiver, he even manages to smile, and a moment later he reaches the conclusion that he doesn’t really like not reciprocating your affection.

So the hand you’d been holding lands at your waist. Your entire aura oozes comfort and it gives him courage, he wonders if you’re doing it on purpose or if you have no idea.

Something tells him it’s probably the latter.

“It was not easy. Not only because I’d never had a boyfriend, but because he was really demanding. He did a lot of coke and was generally really paranoid, so he made me feel like shit every chance he had. Even in bed,” you bite your lower lip and he reaches for your cheek, he’s not done yet and he shouldn’t really care how you feel because his heart is starting to hurt but he can’t help it. “He never trusted me because I still felt how I’ve always felt for women and he thought that made me a hundred times more likely to cheat on him. Instead, he cheated on me.”

Jinki will never get used to the pain in his chest that comes when he remembers those days. The fights, the yelling, the bruises, the getaways, the sex. But he soldiers on and tries to smile because things are different now, he’s different now. He tries to focus on the way the tips of your fingers run through his scalp all the way to the tips of his hair and he’s grounded, because those days don’t haunt him anymore, they can’t reach him anymore.

It hurts to see the pain in his eyes, so much that your own start to hurt. So you nuzzle into his hand and slow down the movement of your own on his head. Just to remind him to feel what he feels now.

“So, dumped by a girl for being too gay and dumped by a guy for not being gay enough. And all this time I’m still not gay,” he shoots you half a smile and you return it, it’s amazing that he still manages to be humorous in moments like these. “But I was very angry. And I decided that the best way to get revenge for what these people did to me was to do the same thing to everyone else I got involved with.”

He looks into your eyes for sympathy and finds it way too quickly, so quickly that it takes away from his narcissistic ego. Man, he really lucked out with the people he’s met here.

“I feel like we should be ten times more crossed to continue this conversation,” he’s getting nervous again, wishing he’d never even started this, fidgeting with his hands and shaking your hands away from his head. “Do you want a drink? I can roll, we could go upstairs and just—  ”

He only manages to blink in response to the way the side of your index finger goes under his chin before you land the most feathery kiss on his lips. “You don’t get to be afraid anymore, either.”

Jinki holds your wrist and sighs, fingers trailing up till he can hold your hand again, and for a moment he wants to sit up. And then another moment comes and he decides doesn’t want to break this moment just yet.

“I met a guy by the name Lee Changsun, who was in my ex’s little dancer clique. He was batshit crazy and a sweetheart, he actually sought me out after the breakup and decided he was going to help me get a rebound. So he brought me to this dingy little house.”

Your mouth turns into a tiny ‘o’, and you nod a moment later because it makes sense. Jinki was handsome, talented, single and very bitter. What better place than a frat house for someone like him?

“He was Sigma Mu’s youngest President ever, and also the messiest. I don’t want to go into detail about the kind of shit we got up to, but let’s just say those first two years were what gave the frat the reputation it has today.”

“Don’t tell me I was the one that turned you into a good boy.”

“I was never bad, I was just petty. And then I was bored. And then I got busy. So busy that at the end of that second year, I didn’t notice that by commencement, Sigma Mu would only have two veteran brothers aside from me, and both were graduating that next spring. Nobody was surprised that I was made candidate for President, and the vote was obviously unanimous.”

You try to picture him through all this, Jinki with messier hair and messier clothes, pushing girls into corners and kissing boys because he could, hiding from cops inside dark closets. And then you can’t help but seeing him in the house after the parties are done, alone, pensive, practicing singing while cleaning alone, dancing because he knows nobody’s watching.

“Changsun graduated, my other seniors graduated, I became a junior and then I met Jonghyun. He said he’d pledge if I gave him singing lessons, which is ridiculous in retrospect but hey, I needed him. He reminded me that even if I didn’t have bros, I had a lot of friends. A lot of friends make good parties, which make more friends and more potential pledges. We realised we weren’t even limited to only undergrads, so Donghae hyung, Eunhyuk hyung and Shim Changmin pledged as grad students. He’d been President as an undergrad so he was a total shoe-in. I almost gave him my title.”

Your expression brightens at the name, and Jinki can’t help but stop to smile and ask the question you’re dying to hear.

“What?”

“Shim Changmin is the love of my life.”

“No, he’s not. I’m the love of your life. Anyway—  ” he grins cheekily and leaves no space for you to argue, immediately looking off to the blanket ceiling to continue. “Through Changmin hyung I met Minho, who had no idea what he wanted to do with his life until I told him his career path was looking at him straight in the face every morning when he woke up— and it really was, he had posters of every Fellini movie everywhere in his dorm room. And then I met Key. I didn’t even need a reason to seek him out. I think he’s my soulmate.”

“I think Taemin is mine.”

“No~” he suddenly looks so offended, his eyebrows furrowed and his lips jutted out in a pout, “I’m your soulmate. Taemin is your… bromate. Okay?”

You try not to laugh and fail epically. “Okay. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

He pouts harder and breaks all contact with you, turning his back to you with a small  _hmph_.

But you grab his shoulder and push it so he’s on his back, and you fold your hands atop his chest and bat your eyelashes at him.

Jinki caves instantly.

“I met Taemin through Key and to be totally honest I didn’t know if I wanted to date him or adopt him, but I decided in the end that he was going to be my son and Minho’s little. Because Minho is also my son. Why are you looking at me like that?”

With a look in your eyes like you’re staring up at the ceiling in a planetarium, with a smile on your face that makes him think your cheeks hurt, it makes him feel… beautiful.

“Because you’re cute.” Is there even a need to hold back anymore? Right now, it feels like you’ve known him your entire life. You don’t know how else to express it but like this, by tilting your head just to the slightest bit closer to him, to forget about everything else around you except the look in his eyes, the sound of his voice and the violet cool freshness that envelops him and the warmth of his skin.

But he shoots you narrow eyes and tries to hide the blush creeping up his face by looking away a moment later, once he, too, realises that it really is no use to hold back anymore.

“My point is,” he breathes in and out and it’s heavy and refreshing and relieving for the both of you, “before I knew it, I’d forgotten my anger and my grief. I walked in here with nothing and I’m leaving with a beautiful, fucked up family. I know that karma is a bitch and all that, but I think it likes me a lot. Because I’m sure I don’t deserve any of this.”

And then it happens. The big  _oh_  moment. A thread of pain forms in your chest and blooms to the rest of your body, but it’s not the kind of pain that hurts. It’s the kind of pain that reminds you of what it feels like not to have it, that reminds you that you’re alive, that your heart is beating, that there’s blood flowing through your veins. And you smile.

“That’s why I did what I did, why I keep doing it. The moment you walked into my backyard I realised that you were going to give me so much trouble in the best way and I know I don’t deserve it.”

Suddenly Jinki feels like he’s not close enough to you, so he turns on his side again so he can share your air again. “I’m so greedy that I want to keep all of us together, but with you… no matter what happens or where we end up, I just really want you to be happy. He wouldn’t want you to be suffering. I don’t want you to be suffering. I want you and Key and Taem and Minho and Jjong to be happy. Does that make sense? Being high makes me ramble so much. I’ve also never been so wrapped around someone else’s finger so there’s that. I just, I’m grateful to you, and… “ he sighs and it’s adorable, “I see your scars, and I want to be there for you and help them heal.”

Oh, fuck, your eyes are watering. And the moment your vision gets foggy, Jinki’s eyes start to water.

“Only if you let me help heal yours, too.”

He tries to stifle a laugh and fails, breaking into the brightest smile when he can’t handle the way you’re looking at him anymore. “Deal.”

Maybe this kind of moment is the reason why poetry exists, he doesn’t even know where to begin describing the way you’re looking at him.

Like watching flowers bloom?

The feeling of being one with where you are, who you’re with?

It makes his heart pound so bad he’s pretty sure you can hear it.

You basically can’t see anymore with how the tears are brimming your eyes but you’re also smiling. This is the longest you’ve ever been with him and it doesn’t feel long enough, you can still see a whole world going on in his head and you wonder if you’ll ever have enough time to get to know it.

So this is that thing. The funky feeling in your chest you’ve had since you met Jinki.

It’s the love thing.

You blink, he blinks, and all emotions spill out of your eyes, of his eyes.

“You said you wouldn’t cry!”

“You’re crying, too!”

And yet you’re both laughing, you’re laughing almost too loudly until you hear a sniffle that doesn’t come from your immediate surroundings.

“ _Hyung_!”

Oh, no. Kibum is awake. Kibum is crying really hard. And Jinki laughs harder when the younger comes to drape himself over his big, patting his back because this really is so comforting. Kibum reaches out for your hand, too, and he grasps it through the first couple of sobs. And then he sniffles, and sits up, looking you both in the eyes like his entire worldview has changed.

“I’m the greatest matchmaker on the fucking planet!”

* * *

The only thing you actually don’t like about Sigma Mu is that everyone is almost annoyingly reliant on Jinki for everything. Study troubles? Go to Jinki. Girl or boy troubles? Go to Jinki. Need life advice? Go to Jinki. Help with Vocal homework? Dance? With the piano? Jinki. Need a cool playlist for your party? President Lee (though really Jonghyun is much more reliable for that kind of thing). Need weed? More alcohol? A hookup for coke or molly? You guessed it, Jinki.

Horribly inconvenient for you, especially when you’re hoping to use what little time Jinki has to spend with you to do nice, downtempo, unwindy things. Things that also resolve a few of your wants and needs.

The first time you’re interrupted, you’re just waking up to the feel of Jinki’s fingertips at your inner thighs on a weekend afternoon, wandering up just because they can. You meet his eyes and see them completely clouded and full of tainted intentions, and you try not to look too enchanted. Which doesn’t work.

And then your dorm room door creaks open, the all too recognizable head of Lee Taemin peeking through, with Kibum in tow.

“Busy?”

And Jinki makes it look like you’re not, like you’d both just woken up and it’d meant nothing at all, and you play along because you don’t know how else to react.

After that night, you don’t see him for a week. So you don’t even question him when he bursts through his door and fits himself between your legs to kiss you just after you’ve come over from work; it’s too late for him to pretend like he hasn’t missed you all week and it’s too late for you to pretend like the distance hasn’t bothered you.

But Jonghyun and Taemin walk through the door, talking about a new drinking game they came up with and need you both to play, and neither you nor Jinki really have the strength to say no, nor do you have an excuse good enough to get you out of this.

And yet, you persevere.

You persevere because a day comes when the frat house is as quiet as the winter, where Jinki’s room is peaceful enough so that you’re able to nap the whole time that he’s at the gym, that it’s still silent even when he comes home to shower, when he plants himself face-down on the mattress beside you and groans about how every single one of his limbs are too sore for him to move.

It’s quiet enough so that when you straddle his hips while he’s still on his stomach it is all met with absolutely no response from the rest of the house, not even when you pull out just a bit lavender oil to ease over his skin.

“You can’t lift more than three times a week, Jinx, we talked about this.” You’re rubbing the tiniest layer of the oil all over his back, where even without touching you can see the tightness in the creaks between his muscles. Which, you have to admit, might be the reason why you’re not really useful when he’s around.

Just last weekend, you spent a good chunk of Saturday night staring at said back, and at his entire torso, because you decided to play strip poker with Kibum and Jonghyun. Ever since then, you are determined to beat Jinki at that, and though you’ve gotten steadily better at the game, it hasn’t happened just yet. If Jinki isn’t owning the game by the final half, Jonghyun is.

Thus far you’ve managed to keep your pants and bra on, and Kibum always ends up getting the short end of the stick.

“But I want to work out more.” He’s grumpy at your tone of voice, because he really likes what the gym does for his mood, for his body, for the way you look at him, and the pout on his lips distracts you from being mindful about the way you’re touching him right now.

“You don’t have to go every day.”

“Minho goes every day.”

“Darling,” and he pushes his face further into his pillows because he’s grinning and doesn’t want you to see, “have you ever gone to the gym with Minho?”

“He’s too competitive and it makes me really uncomfortable.”

“You’d give him a run for his money,” you laugh carelessly, even though you know exactly what he means. “But he only lifts three times a week. I know because him and Taemin have been exactly where you are right now.”

“Did you give them back massages, too?”

He tenses all over suddenly, but you laugh again and put a bit more pressure into the way you carve out the planes of his muscles and smooth out knots in the crevices where there shouldn’t be any. He breathes out slowly, so slowly that he finds himself relaxing even without wanting to.

“Not like you care about that stuff, anyway.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t blame you,” you can almost taste how salty he already is about this, “he’s quite literally a perfect specimen.”

“Physically? Maybe. That doesn’t mean I find him attractive.”

“Don’t try to butter me up.”

You chuckle again, pressing the bottom of your palms on his shoulder blades and pushing into the space between them when he breathes out to hear the blissful  _crack_  that has him sighing again.

“The first time I even met Minho, he was shirtless,” and you smile at the memory, that first Quidditch party you went to where Minho served you some really nasty jungle juice and mistook you for one of his classmates. Kibum came to save you and introduce you some time after, and that night ended with the three of you and Taemin getting high at that apartment building’s roof.

And then you blacked out on the train home.

Good times.

“You don’t have to brag.”

“The point is, he doesn’t affect me. He has never affected me.”

“So now you’re going to say that I affect you?”

You press the tips of your fingers and your thumbs on the flat of his shoulders, progressively kneading harder, and catch him cutting off a groan at the base of his throat and you smile.

“Well,” your tone is mighty nonchalant and extra smug. “I went to dinner with Taemin yesterday after your rehearsal,” he sighs again because you press harder into his shoulders and he might have to tell you to stop soon because he’s starting to get warm. “He said that you were getting so wide that you had to get re-fitted for all of your shirts and jackets.”

You make a pause to lean over just a bit closer to him, moving one of your hands to encircle his neck. You squeeze and press down firmly, and he groans.

“And all day I could not stop thinking about it.”

“You’re unfairly good at this.” He doesn’t leave time for a pause, just turns his head and tries to get his eyes on you, any part of you.

“At what?”

“Words,” he responds instantly, moving just enough so that you rise to your knees so he can get on his back. “You should’ve taken up writing.”

You breathe out once he’s settled, resting your thighs on his own. “Want me to write some poetry about you?”

“Don’t be sly with me,” he sits up, hands going around your waist but not touching you just yet.

“You never know, I may have already done it,” you let your fingers stretch out to touch his neck, under his jaw.

“You wouldn’t.” His smile is shy, reserved, surprisingly bashful. And you want to say something, do something about the way you practically feel your gaze warm up and turn something much more sinister.

But then Taemin brusts through the door, laptop in his arms and blasting the opening song to the latest arc of  _One Piece_ , and before you know it he’s made a home in the space he created between you and Jinki and you have absolutely no time to interject.

And yet, you smile.

 

>[ _y_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DSR5Pe3Bs9os&t=YjhjZWMyNjRlYTAxYTYzYjA1OGQ3ZjJhYzFjYzg3OGU1NDIzYmFjZCxpaU9TSDgzag%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161569843368%2Fbokeru-m&m=1) _ou’re the wave, and I’m ready for the crash_

You forgot how much of dating actually involves scheduling. And you’ve never been the most organised person.

It becomes particularly apparent when calls and messages start getting inopportune, when Jinki won’t answer your calls after the radio is done because it’s been six hours since you last spoke and you haven’t bothered to answer his last text, when you don’t answer Jinki’s calls at the crack of dawn because you just fell asleep and he didn’t answer your goodnight text from eight hours ago, anyway, so you’re not in the mood to run with him.

But then it’s Thursday night and you see him with your own two eyes and it’s like nothing happened at all. That’s another thing you’d forgotten, how dating makes every sensory experience so… sensory.

You’re studying in the main hall of the library after missing a call from him because you’re buried between your last assigned Brit Lit novel and your composition book. All the editing booths are full and so are the study rooms, so you really have no choice but to sit here and agonise to get ahead on everything you can before a booth opens up so you can finish the assignment you have due tomorrow afternoon. Multitasking is usually easy for you, but today, you’re just too jittery to really focus on any one thing. So you’re outlining your three fastest approaching final assignments because your anxiety is making you think that this is the perfect time to start feeling like you have to cram.

Jinki doesn’t realise that’s why you don’t see him sitting directly across from you. Literally, one desk is all that separates you, a good ten feet at most. So he watches, half because he’s a little pissed, and half because it’s all he can do to try and ignore those three girls staring at him a table over.

Also because maybe, just maybe, it’s a little bit cute to watch you scramble to get your head together. Even from here, he can see you’re not getting much done, and it’s a great distraction from the main reason why he doesn’t really hang in the library much.

He’ll never get used to people looking at him. Usually he’d avoid the library; actually, he avoids any school building when he’s not in class or working in a booth or studio, precisely because of this. The staring.

It’s like some people have never seen him in broad daylight and are amazed that he is actually a person outside the wild frat parties. Which makes sense, for some of the kids that aren’t in the same department as him or don’t move in the same circles. But still. He does a lot of theater work at school, and he literally volunteers for most charitable events happening on campus.

He eyes them out the corner of his eye a few times, the girls. Once to confirm if they’re a classmate and again to confirm whether or not they were someone he had intentions of hooking up with but never followed through for one reason or another. Or did follow through and then never called back.

What? It’s been an eventful four years.

So maybe he’s a bit nervous when one of them starts to look like she’s going to approach him. He tries to look busy, leafing through his copy of Octavio Paz’s  _The Double Flame_  because he’s supposed to hand in a paper on it tomorrow, but his hands shake a little and he decides that he needs to move.

Preferably in your comfort inducing direction.

Even when he sits directly in front of you, you don’t lift your eyes from your books. Now he notices you have IEMs in, and the way you’re biting down on your lower lip tells him you’re probably a bit more anxious than you are on a regular basis.

It’s adorable. Right up ‘till the moment you move to get up. He opens his mouth to call out to you but catches the glint of the monitors again, and by the time he starts to move to follow you, somebody taps him on the shoulder and he turns his head.

Up close, he realises that he does know one of them. It’s definitely one of the girls that he hooked up with and then never called back, and though he should feel guilty and a bit embarrassed, he really can’t help but smile. Not the kind of smile that’s inviting, but one of acknowledgement, the kind that comes when he walks past an acquaintance. The fact that it still manages to disarm them all right before his eyes is even funnier, but it’s not as toxic as it used to be, as it used to feel.

It’s… better. Maybe he’s better.

Then there’s warmth at his shoulder, on the entire length of his body, and his head whips around to find you cuddled to his side. You don’t say anything, don’t do anything beside lift your copy of Plato’s  _Republic_  closer to you, and it kind of makes him mad how melty he feels right now.

You don’t tell him you’d seen the girls when they’d started to approach him, that it was the only reason you even spotted him in the first place. Instead, you take out one of the monitors and hang it by his ear for him to wear, and you wait patiently for the snide comment sitting at the tip of his tongue.

“So, did you get jealous enough to acknowledge me?”

You want to answer, but you don’t, because the heat in your cheeks and the back of your neck makes you too proud to actually say anything. So you shut your book, instead looking over to his own because everything about him right now gives you all the calm you’ve needed all day.

And it stays that way right up to the moment that the one sound booth opens up, when you get a text from the girl at the desk with the booth number and the time it’ll be available for and you’re scrambling out of your comfort cocoon and Jinki’s walking you to the elevators. He’s with you right up ‘till the moment the lift doors open up and he kisses you goodbye after making you promise to come over at the end of the night, and you tuck yourself into the corner of the contraption to muse quietly at how wonderfully your mood has turned in a little over an hour.

It obviously doesn’t last.

“Was that Lee Jinki?”

“Yeah! Weird to see him at the library, huh?”

“Totally weird. And that girl! Who was that?”

“Oh,” one of the girls looks over her shoulder, and you’re standing right behind her, “it looks like he’s chosen his freshman catch. You know how he picks one up every year to play with.”

Um, okay. Wow.

“It never really lasts long, though. He outgrows them pretty quickly.”

Your head is reeling, nearly screaming at you to do something.  _I’m right here_ , it’s all you can think, all you can process because you want to confront this, you’re not anyone’s toy—

But a darker part of you reminds you that he’s about to graduate, that your situation has never been anything close to ideal, that it might be a bit too late for you now. Maybe you waited too long to open up.

Then a thought rushes past you that overpowers the rest, and gives you the strength to plug your IEMs back in, get your chin back up. They don’t know him, they don’t know him like you do, they have no way of knowing the real him, or the real you. They have no way of knowing what your relationship to him means, and you have no intention of telling them.

That doesn’t mean the thoughts don’t linger in the back of your brain.

You’re not supposed to let them win, but you keep flashing back to what they said like it’s supposed to mean something. It doesn’t, because they don’t know anything, they see the shore but you’ve been to the ocean floor and they’ll never know.

So why do you let it affect you? Why are you letting it affect the way you see him? Why are you letting that seed of doubt settle in the corners of your brain, when you know that it’ll just plague you?

The subtleties of the pain in the very core of your chest are lost on you, you’re blatantly slower and more robotic in every way. Time flies past you and suddenly the Sound Design assignment is done and it’s good, it’s okay, but you’re working at the radio station right now and you can’t keep your eyes on anything for over two seconds.

“Are you okay?”

It’s the second time Jonghyun’s asked you that question, and he’s really not all that surprised to watch you ignore him. Because the soundboard is definitely always more interesting than he is. You’d almost forgotten to cue up the last commercial break and he had to actually throw a pen at you to get you to snap out of whatever the fuck is going through your brain and do your job.

He’s usually very patient about things like this, but because it’s you, he’s a little pissed. Not just because he takes the radio a little extra seriously, but because it bothers him that you’re not confiding in him, or in anyone, by the looks of it.

Jonghyun taps the top of your head and you whip it around with eyes wide as planets, and he really wants to stay mad but that deer in the headlights expression of yours is almost funny. “What’s going on?”

What  _is_  going on? It feels stupid to explain. The truth is all you’re feeling is insecurity, which you’ve already justified in your brain. It’s because you’re young, because you’re in a new place. Because you just let go of one demon so you’re basically game for every other one lurking around these halls.

Because you care. You care way too much and maybe all of this was a bad idea. It was a bad idea to go to that party that night, it was a bad idea to spend the night, to get to know him, to get to know anything about him.

He’ll be gone in a few weeks. And what of you? Taemin’s been asking what your plan is for the summer, if you want to intern at that up and coming theatre company downtown, if you just want to go home and chill for a bit, and you don’t know what you want to do.

Wait. You do know. You want time to stop.

“Are you busy tonight?”

Jonghyun’s eyebrows furrow at your question, even more at the way your eyes droop to make you look extra tired. “No, why?”

“Wanna get fucked up?”

* * *

Every time you get this baked, the only thing you can think about is the fact that you never want to get drunk or high again. It’s the one predominant thought you’ve had every night this week. Today feels different because, for one, you’re not alone.

Taemin is too exhausting to get wasted with, you always feel so much like you need to  _be_  there and care so much when he’s around because you can’t help it, because you really always want to be there for him, you always want to care.

With Jjong, things are different. It’s easy to let silence have a space. Out here by the river that borders the city, the cold and the silence and the warmth is tangible enough to acknowledge but not enough to act as a rift between you. The evening is chilly but not unbearable, it’s dark but not unwelcoming, it’s always so nice to sit here because there’s so much peace in the shades of navy and gray that surround you, in the ashy brown of the wood in the pier. Though that doesn’t do much for the very specific tension that hangs over you, over Jonghyun.

It’s obvious he’s dying to ask, you’ve seen the questions hit the tip of his tongue with every hit he takes off the joint (and they’re not that many) as he watches you slowly take off one guise to put on another.

“So, you don’t want to talk about it?”

You really don’t. Especially because you feel like all you bring to the quintet of amazing people that have surrounded you this semester are frowns and concern and less than happy things.

Shouldn’t you be happier? Now that you’ve gotten rid of the raincloud that had been permanently hanging over your head? That you faced the trauma that poisons you and that you’re now fighting back?

“I don’t want to depress you.”

“Trust me, I don’t need you to take care of that,” Jonghyun smiles and nudges your shoulder, encouraging you to walk closer to the water.

There’s a long line of logs cut up to act as a makeshift banister all through the edges of the pier, and they only really go up to Jjong’s hip. So, eventually, the high makes the air too cold to stand in and you sit on the logs and huddle as close together as you can. The nearness, surprisingly enough, makes it really easy to breathe.

“Hey, assholes!”

Why is Choi Minho running in the middle of the night looking like an olympic champion? He even looks kind of expensive, hair floating in the wind and shining bright black and silver till he’s close enough to jump over the railing and land right next to you. “Pass the joint.”

“Bossy,” Jjong comments with a grin teasing the corner of his mouth, but Minho just shrugs and squeezes the spliff between his thumb and forefinger.

“This is wasted on you, anyway, Mr Glass Lungs,” he says just as he breathes in the fire and the bitterness. “What’s up?”

“We were about to have an epic bonding moment and your Usain Bolt wannabe ass interrupted us.”

“Epic bonding moment? What’s going on?” it’s so weird how fast Minho’s eyes change, how much of a mirror they are to what he’s thinking, how he’s feeling. He’s obviously worried, when he catches the way you’re staring out to the water blankly, like you have no intention to add anything to anything happening around you because you feel… empty.

Instead of taking advantage of the nights and days you have left, you’re sulking. Running. You’re avoiding the very reason why you want everything to freeze, suspend in time until you’re not so fragile, not so attached.

“It’s… stupid,” is all you say in the end, and Minho laughs and nudges your arm before wrapping his own around your shoulders. He’s warm as hell and it’s surprisingly welcome. “I feel stupid.”

“Why?” Minho sounds so concerned that it makes your face warm, half with embarrassment, half with just… gratitude.

“Some girls, they said that he’ll just… that I’ll burn out, and just — did Jinki hook up with a lot of freshmen? Or like, people?”

“Is that what this is about?”

Minho bursts out laughing, so much that you can see water collect at the corners of his eyes, and he laughs when he reads your expression to see you don’t find this funny in the slightest. “I’m sorry,” he chuckles, “sorry, really. It’s a totally valid question, I just didn’t expect you to care about that kind of thing.”

He passes the joint over to you almost as a peace offering and you take it, looking over at Jonghyun to see if at least he’s taking this seriously. He’s smiling, though not mockingly. He’s smiling the kind of smile that reminds you of your age, and it’s a little refreshing. So you pull up your knees to your chest and pout as you rest your chin between them.

“I told you it was stupid.”

“People talk a lot of shit,” he starts out, looking away to the water, and the way the bright gleam of the moon hits his face makes his jaw look extra stark, it makes Minho look extra ethereal when you turn to look at him and watch him nod to second Jonghyun’s words. “Maybe he’s hooked up with a lot of people but he’s only ever wanted to be with two. You know who the first person was, and you know who the second person is.”

“Who’s the second person?”

Jonghyun slaps the back of Minho’s head with the flat of his palm and the younger hisses but laughs, anyway, because there’s a break that’s necessary in this conversation to remind you not to take things so heavily, to remind you that the whole reason why this sextet of fucked upness works is because it’s effortless.

Jonghyun sighs and it brings you out of your head, even more so when his hand takes your own. “Don’t let others make you think you have to mend something that’s not broken.”

“Wow, hyung, that’s some fake deep shit.”

Now you’re the one to push Minho ‘till he almost tips over the railing, and he’s not shy about his laughter this time, either. He whirls back up and wraps both of his arms around you and pulls you really close, and there’s something very serious about the way he touches you. It almost makes your eyes water.

“We’d never hurt you, you know,” he whispers. “And if anyone tried, I’d personally kill them. So stop worrying, okay? He won’t go anywhere you can’t go, too.”

“Follow. I think you meant to say follow.”

Minho hisses and Jonghyun looks outraged for a spilt second, but the younger speaks before he can. “You don’t have to follow anyone anywhere. You walk with us. On your own path. On your own terms. Okay?”

You want to cry but you don’t. Instead, you smile.

“Okay.”

 

> _[i](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdJW1UBS3DHI&t=MTcyZGFlYjk3NzlkZGFkMDc1MGE5ZWNiZDkwYmU1MThjZjY2ZmE4MyxpaU9TSDgzag%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161569843368%2Fbokeru-m&m=1)’m betting on your grace darlin’, help_

Alone time is really important to you, really important for Jinki. He likes that he still gets to do school work and work work and even creative work in his own space, and you like that you can do the same in your own. But outside of that and outside of his duties, Jinki really has zero down time. What you had at the library never really happens, and you didn’t think you’d be so grateful for it (despite your brief crisis) until you walk through the doors of the Sigma Mu house thirty minutes later, high and the smiliest you’ve been in months.

You don’t know how Sigma Mu parties get organised, but you’re not exactly surprised to find at least two dozen people crowding the porch and the first floor, you’re not surprised at the bitter smell of weed in the air or the glowy cast of its smoke.

If you’re completely honest with yourself, though, you haven’t really been able to stop thinking about the girls in the lift earlier, you can’t stop thinking about the fact that you want to remain steadfast but you also want to know that the Jinki you know is the one that you’re with, the one that, at least for now, is a little bit yours.

You’ve always hated doubt, mostly because it’s so hard to escape it. But you’re trying.

It’s probably why your eyes look the way they do when they finally spot Jinki, why your hands shake the way they do on your way towards the staircase, why everything about the way your eyes lock on his own is so especially intimate, almost secretive and so, so indigent.

And he catches on immediately. He knows where you’ll be, he knows that you’ll wait, he can see the doubt that plagues him in you, too. But it’s not as crippling as what he’s been feeling ever since he heard about those two girls at the library, talking about you like you were a plaything, talking about him like he was a plaything.

It’s not even all that funny (or surprising), how quickly Jinki starts closing the doors on the conversations he’d been entertaining, how quickly he exchanges glances with Kibum to form an out of this living room and a ticket upstairs; it’s not even two minutes after you walk in the door that he’s making his way back to his room after making an empty promise to return for more shots, more shenanigans.

He almost feels a little sober when he walks through his door to a candlelit room, to find you already dressed down and sitting under the window in the wall by his wardrobe, browsing through Soundcloud in between sips of a gigantic bottle of water. It was freezing in here when he left but it’s so warm right now, and he can’t be sure if it’s because of you or because of the candles you’ve lit by his nightstand and by your side and by his drawer chest, or if he’s the one who’s warm because you’re so pretty right now, and all the time, because it smells like rain and violets everywhere and it’s like the perfect mix of you and him.

You look up at him because he won’t stop staring, and you can’t help but smile.

“Hi,” you say, and it almost acts as the spell to defrost a little of his expression. He walks over to the spot beside you to see you’ve rolled a jay and laid down that one fleecey blanket you brought from your room for the rare times you both smoke up in here. And he knows you’ve pressed [p](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DuLeYr6Lf4AA&t=YmQwZWI0Y2EzMDEwZjdiZGU1Zjk0MDM0N2ZlZTc5YTQyYTQ5YjBjZixpaU9TSDgzag%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161569843368%2Fbokeru-m&m=1)lay on your freshest playlist right as he lands next to you, taking the joint to light and he’s looking at you like he hasn’t seen you in days.  

“What?”

He looks you up and down now, a smile on his face that makes you feel like a gemstone. You’ve ditched your clothes for that one gigantic t-shirt of his that you like so much, and the only thing you seem to be wearing besides that is a pair of fuzzy Luffy socks he usually keeps hidden so Taemin doesn’t find and steal them.

Turns out Taemin wasn’t the one he should have been watching out for.

“What?” you ask again, more pressing in tone, and your smile blooms along with his own because even he’s not sure why he’s looking at you like that.

“I just… love how comfortable you are in the spaces we share.”

He’s already laughing before you reach out for one of the pillows on his bed to hit him with, and he’s still giggling when you wrestle him down and hit him none too gently with the feathery weapon. He scrambles to his feet and you chase him into bed, where you cage him again by straddling his hips.

“You’re-so-gross,” you say between swings, before sitting up on his lap because he’s out of breath, and frankly, so are you. Your chest feels like it’s about to burst in a way that’s different from when you indulge your bad habits too much, your heart is beating quick but true, strong, pounding against your ribcage to remind you of now.

He’s chuckling when he sits up, too, even when his hands land on your cheeks and trail down to the sides of your neck because there’s such a pretty sheen to everything right now, your whole aura is like a screen of gold and silver and white that makes the whole world feel so… nice.

The air changes when Jinki kisses you. It’s not two people who are way too intoxicated and making out, it’s not a playful game for two that got heated. It’s something that’s so much heavier, something that gradually becomes darker without losing any light, something that you’ll probably never be able to explain. It’s there, in the way he touches you and how it makes the friction linger even after his fingers have migrated from your neck to the back of your shoulders. It makes you shudder and it doesn’t, part of you wants to move away but a bigger part of you wants him closer, wants him everywhere.

There’s something about the way he tastes, like fire and soju and smoke, that makes you warm and cold, that forces you to pull him against you because everything about him is a mystery you’re not sure you’ll ever solve, but you sure as hell want to try.

But obviously, someone finds it the perfect time to bust that door open and the bubble bursts for approximately two and a half seconds.

Because if there’s one person who doesn’t give a fuck about interruptions tonight, it’s Lee Jinki. You want to look over your shoulder to see who’s at the door but he doesn’t let you, his grip is too firm on the small of your back. He lets you move an inch from his skin, though, enough to let him crack an eye open to glare at whoever’s breached this moment. You don’t know what it is he tells whoever’s at the door with his eyes, but suddenly he’s moving to lay you down on the bed, making it so the light hits only the line on his back and his body can act as the shadow that shields you.

He just doesn’t want anyone else to see you.

His mouth is still on yours, teeth nibbling at your lower lip for mere moments before his lips move against your own until your curiosity fades; it almost happens at the same time that the foreign light coming from the open door disappears.

Then it doesn’t matter anymore, who was at the door or what they wanted, if they learned to knock next time or not. All you care about is the heat of the body pressed on yours, the way it reminds you to live now. To think about now. It’s so easy, when all you can see is the blur of his dark hair and the gorgeous gold of his skin, when all you can feel is the buzz of the tips of his fingers like sun rays on your body and the way he breathes in your skin, all you can hear is the blend of his soft and laboured breathing and the sound of the friction of his body, his clothes against this shirt, against his bedsheets and against your own body.

That is until he suddenly pulls away, pushing himself up with his elbows pressed on the mattress on either side of your head, his thumb caressing your ear to tuck stray strands of your hair behind it.

“Are you sure?”

You can’t help it when you laugh, maybe because you’re a little surprised at yourself, and he thinks you’ll backtrack when you sit up to talk to him and that’s why he lets you.

But you only laugh until you curl your fingers on the hem of the shirt your wearing and pull it over your head. Under which there is only a pair of very thin panties. “Very sure,” you start, and you’re honestly surprised he’s still looking you in the eyes.

He blinks at you, two, three times like he’s trying to think of how to react to you right now. Then he smiles, considering for a moment that you did this on purpose to catch him even further off guard… and it worked.

“Why are you naked under my clothes?”

You hum because you don’t have a good answer. The bra came off because it’s a pretty warm night and you didn’t feel like wearing it anymore, and maybe it was a good call, because the way his eyes drink in your frame is really rewarding and you feel like he won’t reprimand you, at least not just yet.

For some reason he can’t really explain right now, he’d expected you to be bashful. He’d expected you to hide, because what you have with one another is still pretty recent and he didn’t think you’d be comfortable enough to be like this with him, to open yourself up like this. And while he could be thinking of the fact that this is a line you’re ready to cross together, all he can really think of is the fact that he’s so… proud. Of you, and your strength. He’s in awe of the aura of insecure boldness that surrounds you with clothes on and off, and it’s 95% of the reason why he leans back into you to kiss you.

The other 5% reminds him that he’s just a frat boy, just a boy. It’s the bit of him that catalyses the way he leans back into you, the bit of him that nips at your skin, that leaves your mouth so he can suck marks at the crook of your neck and the curve of your shoulder while his hands pin your wrists over your head. Eventually, though, it mixes with the rest of his conviction to bite at your collarbones, it’s the final touch to the mess of his brain that makes his body shudder when you moan, that can only think of keeping you close even when your body turns way too warm and he can feel you breathing harder, he can almost hear the way your heart rate quickens to a pace just a tinge slower than his own.

“Why are you so pretty?” there’s a feather’s width of space between his lips and your own and you don’t mean for your breathing to get so heavy but you can’t help it, can’t help the laugh that escapes you because of all people, he’s calling you pretty.

“Probably because the lights are dim,” your arms fight against his grip, you hate that all this time he’s still fully clothed, so you want to test his intentions. Starting by wrestling yourself out of the grip he’s taken on your wrists, you run your hands up and down his scalp until your fingers trickle through expanse of his shoulder blades and go around so you can touch his clavicle, almost enviable compared to your own.

Then, you notice the look in his eyes like he’s waiting for you to reel back.

“What?” your voice is small, timid, probably because you can tell that he’s just all about you right now.

“Reluctance looks good on you,” he laughs when you roll your eyes and pull on the collar of his shirt to kiss him again because maybe you are reluctant but your intentions are always good. “Boldness looks better.”

And you guess he’s right, as you reach the buttons of said shirt. There’s nothing subtle about the way you pop them off one by one, there’s nothing patient about the way he shimmies out of it. You’re distracted when the warm light of the candles hit the flexing of his bare chest but he isn’t, shrugging out of the shirt till he can knock it off his body and fling it across the room because it’s about all the time he can handle with just his eyes on you, all the time you want to spend staring at his sculpted chest and not touching it.

And then the fucking door opens again and it takes every single ounce of patience in his soul to not scream, and instead press his body down onto yours so he can cover you.

You always do forget that none of the bedroom doors in the frat house have locks. It’s supposed to make brothers conscious of what they do in here, how anyone could come in at any time. As if that would discourage the kind of messes that happen in those bedrooms on the daily.

Jinki raises his head to meet whoever’s at the door, though, and your theory is that the glare he shoots them is so potent that it’s the reason why the door gets slammed back shut so quickly and so loudly.

“Fucking worst idea I’ve ever had,” Jinki mutters, surely referencing the fact that as soon as he became frat President, all locks to the bedroom doors were removed. He gets off the bed and walks over to his dresser, to where your fleece blanket is, where one of his bigger cushions is, and your eyes follow him right up till the minute he gets in the bathroom door and lays down the blanket on the floor. He even pops out to snatch the candle you’ve left atop his drawer chest, and eyes you curiously once he’s back inside, as if asking why you haven’t followed him in yet.

“This door locks.”

You laugh so hard it burns your eyes, because it’s his only explanation, and pretty much all you need to know. You walk up to him and let him shut the door behind you before he traps you against it. This bathroom is pretty sizeable, even bigger than yours back in the dorms. You’re pretty sure a circle of six or seven people could sit in this space and host a sit down soirée with room to spare.

Being frat President really does have its perks, after all.  

Though the candle and the mess of a blanket and the mixture of the drink and the smoke in you both make this room feel like anything but a bathroom.

Mostly because you have very little reason to keep your eyes open. The rest of your senses take over as the smell of violet and tea overpower the room, and suddenly all you can think about is how cold the door is on your skin as Jinki presses you against it, how hot his mouth is in contrast, how soft his hands feel, sound on your skin as he runs them down your arms and around your waist, down to your hips and to the very hem of the thin lace you decided to wear today because it was way too warm to wear anything thicker.

Your hands don’t lose pace, syncopating against his own as they travel down his back, and every ripple of muscle has you reeling, wondering and curious and so tempted to roam. All too soon, your hands join at the valley of his spine, moving down ‘till you reach the waistband of his dark denim. And then, you’re suddenly too aware of your own nakedness, of the vulnerability that he cannot see but that you still feel.

But then he kisses the shell of your ear, his chin pressing against the crook of your neck, and you feel safe again.

There’s nothing hurried about the way you move with one another, but there’s urgency in the way the pair of you end up tangled up in your blanket, something way too sudden about how quickly the fleece in it heats up your bodies and adds to all the other reasons why you’d both break a sweat in here. It doesn’t take long ‘till his jeans are sliding off his body, getting absolutely no help from the way you’ve gotten him on his back under you so you, too, can suck bruises on the bridge of his neck and under his ear.

The way he whimpers when the pain peaks is too gratifying, so much that you’re tempted to stop just to find out if he likes the hurt. But he never tells.

“I can’t believe we’re about to have sex on your bathroom floor,” you whisper eventually, because you can’t help yourself, and he laughs and rolls you onto your back.

“How lucky this tiny space is,” he nips at his lower lip before he leans down to touch his nose to yours, hands trailing toward yours to keep them pinned to your side. It doesn’t work, he doesn’t put enough strength where he should and you end up sitting up and bringing him up with you, your eyes stern but eager.

“I don’t want anyone else to see you.” It’s an afterthought that’s genuine, but hurried. And he doesn’t mean it just in the sense that you’re barely clothed, but in the sense that you’re this vulnerable, this raw, this naked. Not in body, but in aura and in spirit.

It does make you feel better, safer. He makes you feel better, safer. Not just because he’s there, not because he means that much to you… but because you never thought you’d find anyone who would complement the good in you, the bad in you, the okay in you. You never thought you could be so close to someone and feel something more beside the warmth, the electricity of the attrition that your bodies share when his fingernails graze your skin and tease at the skin under your belly button just because he can.

“You’re adorable,” a giggle escapes you before you can stop it, for some reason you feel like it breaks the mood, but it does nothing more than motivate the tips of Jinki’s fingers to linger lower, to lighten their touch so that it’s only the featheriest tease and it still feels like licks of fire to you, to every part of you. Your carnality had never been so evident, not until he’d tapped into it and made you feel like you wanted to be corrupted, like you wanted every one of your senses to be overloaded.

It’s only when you manage to straddle him again that you take note of the hardness you feel against the space between his thighs, and it makes you gasp.

“Is that really the word you want to use right now?” he breathes in your ear and you shiver, because the combination of the harsh texture of his dark denim and the tightness that has started to build underneath it makes you so very aware of the beads of sweat collecting at the back of your neck and the crown of your head, makes you so very aware of the heat pooling between your legs that only now started to beg for touch. So you move against him, in waves so that the weight that presses on him fluctuates, so he feels as much as you, enough so that even with closed eyes you can taste, feel, see the want in him without seeing.

He moans and his fingers press your hips closer to his own. His hardness tightens some more, until he hisses in your ear and the sound travels along with the roll of your hips against his own. Jinki responds with eyes screwed shut yet as open as yours, mouth gaping and panting and as desperate as your own breathing and he hopes you know. 

He hasn’t been able to tell you that what’s making you doubt him is the same thing that makes him doubt himself, even though he has nothing but love to give to this tiny heart beating above him, especially when you move and giggle and make believe that he’s the one to take care of tonight as the [s](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DSR5Pe3Bs9os&t=YjhjZWMyNjRlYTAxYTYzYjA1OGQ3ZjJhYzFjYzg3OGU1NDIzYmFjZCxpaU9TSDgzag%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161569843368%2Fbokeru-m&m=1)ong changes from outside the bathroom into something sultrier and so much more dim. Somehow, you can still hear it, faint but so, so true, and it speaks to a part of you that’s selfish and greedy and he gets it, feels it, reciprocates completely to remind you that he’s here to indulge that solitude, that avarice.

A part of him wants to replace it with surfeit, deluge your edacity ‘till your bursting at the seams because maybe then you’ll feel a fraction of what he feels under your touch, under your influence, how he feels in your light. But then your hips roll against his own with so much raw finesse that it makes him selfish, too, it makes him want so much more than he should, too.

He sits up and you move along with him, your hands trailing up so your fingers rest under and over his ears. The way you’re breathing makes the moistness of his mouth feel hot and cold at once, and he indulges the feeling for the single second that he waits before he kisses you, hot and heavy, until he bites on your lower lip and lets it slip away as he pushes your back against the blanket again.

But this time you can feel that he’s not so much playing around anymore, not with the way his bruising kiss trails down between your collarbones, in the valley of your chest, the way it deviates to the spot just above one of your hipbones before he starts to suck at the skin there with one of his hands pressing down on the other.

All you can do is tangle your fingers in his hair and remind yourself to breathe.

He chuckles when you gasp as the tips of his fingers graze the white lace that covers you, resting his cheek on your hipbone so he can peer up and look at you as you rise to your elbows to watch. If you’re totally honest with yourself, most of you wants to hit him for making you feel this whipped.

There’s still another bit that you’re not ready to account for. But you know it’s the part of yourself that encourages your fingers to reach out to card through his hair, that encourages the way his eyes look; it’s the part of you that stops your own eyes from fluttering when his lips start to trace the path his fingers have drawn across your hips.

Even when his mouth veers down.

The room is too warm for you to feel any less than you do, the coolness of the scent coming from the candle in here has condensed so it collides with the mix of smug and smitten that raids you. Maybe it’s because you’re lying down, but the joint from earlier is really coming through now, doing nothing but heightening the spark in everything that is touching you right now, making Jinki feel ten times brighter and bolder and hotter.

You want to say something, anything about how it feels when he looks up at you again, and you know he means to ask permission to cross this line. His entire body has moved so that only his upper body touches you, his arms cradling around your thighs, his torso down the length of your legs and it doesn’t feel constricting. It feels safe.

“Jinx, please.”

It’s all he wants, it’s the only reason why a wickedly innocent smile blooms on his face. There’s nothing innocent about his hands, though, the way they slide down to your inner thighs and slip under the thin, white lace and feel around the heat that has collected here. It takes everything you’ve got not to gasp, and instead you bite down on your lower lip and rise to rest your upper body on your elbows to see him more, feel him more, watch the way two of his fingers oh, so carefully slide inside you.

It’s a gorgeous view. For you, and for him.

You probably don’t realise, the way your eyes shut when he starts to stretch you out, how your face flushes with colour as he gets more bold and moves in and out with every intention to push you off the brink you’re starting to near. And he’d love it if he only felt smug about the way you react to his touch, but it hurts him, there’s so much tightness in his hips and the space between his legs that he’d do anything to get this heat outside his body and in yours, because he’d like so much to watch you combust under him, with him, because of him—  

But then you moan, and the sweet sound takes away the craving immediately. Instead, his free hand moves to hook on the side of your panties and tug. Once to hear the slap against your skin, and once more so he can slide it down and away from your body. He makes sure to lean on your inner thigh to look up at you again, to watch the glint in your eyes darken and what little air is left in you escape through the tiny gap between your lips just before his thumb moves to just lightly graze your clit.

He only does it to watch you sit up some more, to watch your breathing quicken until you start to pant and your fingers become a fist in his hair. Almost pushing him to where he knows you want him. Where you never knew you wanted him. Not until this exact moment.  

And Jinki is more than happy to oblige.

A lot of things about him make you feel more than they should. His hair, for one, the way it’s so dark that it reminds you of the dead of night and clear skies. The entire length of his body, both taut but still keeping the perfect kind of brawn, sculpted to near perfection for the viewing pleasure of everyone who shares his path. But if there’s one thing you envy of Lee Jinki, it’s his mouth.

You hate that it’s so plump and so pouty, how it doesn’t look all that special at a distance, but up close… it’s the most dangerous thing. He’s always had the bad habit of biting them, both his upper and lower lip, and you always forget how full they are until his teeth release them and you see the swollen coral pink of them and you wish they’d touch every inch of your skin.

But you don’t think you could have ever prepared for how he actually feels on the expanse of your body, in the one space all the heat of tonight has collected. How effortlessly he subdues you, reduces and amplifies you to a mess of want, of need, of roaming hands and shaky breaths and you wish you could have his skin on every inch of yours but you don’t think you have the strength to move at all when his tongue swirls around you, when his touch becomes harder and more languid at once and he hits your clit, sucks, and your whole hazy vision blacks out.  

The worst thing is that he knows, you hate that he knows what he’s doing when you suppress the noises at the base of your throat, when every muscle in your body tenses and moves in harmony with his touch. You know that he can hear the way your breathing is starting to stutter, he can feel the way your own heartbeat gets erratic and you hate it because you’re so vulnerable even with your hands in his hair and the nape of his neck, encouraging him to keep going, almost asking for more.

And he has the fucking nerve to moan against your skin, to pinch your inner thigh with his free hand just to hear you squeal, feel you squirm.

“God, I hate you,” it’s barely audible but he still hears you, still snickers. It’s just too easy to give in, to the parts of him that want to see you, hear you fall apart. So he can only smile when your head kicks back and your hair cascades around your body and tickles the blanket underneath you, when you come back around because the strokes of his tongue on your clit get faster, along with the pace of his fingers and the way his free hand squeezes the skin behind your knee.

It’s too much, the gears of your body are winding way too fast and you can’t keep up, there’s noise building between your ears and it’s not just because of the noise outside.

Maybe it’s because this tiny room makes you so aware of all the bodies you know are overindulging downstairs, in the room across the hall, the one next door, maybe that’s what takes all words from you. Or maybe it’s your pride, still so adamant on preventing you from letting him know that you’re so far gone, that you’re so much his and that you’d never tell him.

At least not without a little coaxing.

But then his touch becomes heavier, you can feel him even in your bones and he starts to gain speed and confidence. His free hand pinches at your skin again and you yelp his name as if it was cursing and he chuckles. The huffs of air travelling across your skin make you shudder and moan again, and again when his fingers slide out of you and bring the wetness to where his mouth had been.

Because he’s looking up at you now, meeting your eyes with nothing but absolute debauchery in his own. Jinki licks his lips and you see the candlelight shine on his entire face and you catch how it makes his mouth glisten. And fuck, you really don’t want to think about that right now, not when his fingers are doing wonders to wind the nerves in the deepest layers of you to make you sing like the prettiest, purest of songbirds.

“Don’t hold back, darling.” He always did like the sound of your voice, it’s always been so hard not to pick up on it. It’s so clear to him now, when you’ve reached the point of no return and you’ve lost control of your voice, when you no longer try to repress the beautiful, natural harmonies that burst from your throat under the conduction of his hands, of his body, of his mouth.

Jinki couldn’t be more proud.

The peak of pleasure feels like an explosion but isn’t, it takes your voice and your self-control but it feels so good, so right, your entire body feels like it’s contracting and expanding. You don’t know how many times you call out to gods, to Jinki, how many curses slip past your lips. You’re sure your thighs are shaking despite your feeling absolutely limbless, breathing heavy and loud until your ears ring, until your elbows can’t hold you up anymore and the fist that had tightened in Jinki’s hair starts to caress the locks of black.  

You can’t tell if your eyes are open or closed, not even when you feel him move up to suck a bruise on the skin of your hipbone, the same one where he’d rested his head a few minutes ago. But there’s some strength left in you, enough to tug at his hair to make him move back so you can sit up.

He grins, head tilted to the side and eyes following your mouth all the way till it’s pressed against his own, you can’t even begin to take in what more you can taste in him besides the drink, the fire, yourself and him, and his arms circle yours and tuck you as close to him as he can get you while remaining gentle.

Surprisingly, it’s you who’s feeling anything but gentle.

“Take these off,” you tap on the clothed skin of his thigh, and maybe you’d sound more authoritative if you weren’t so breathless, and maybe that’s why he hums and presses his mouth against your jaw until you’ve slid off his lap and out of his reach.

Jinki watches you watch him for a whole ten seconds, purposefully testing your patience and taking another chance to look at the length of your body bathed in this faint candlelight.

“Off, Jinki,” he grins wider and watches you get comfortable, through the eagerness in your eyes isn’t easily veiled. But he obeys either way, it’s not really a whole minute after the dark jeans and the briefs are off that you’re back on his lap and you groan because this is  _so_  much better than it was a bit ago, fuck.

He’s so pretty it hurts.

Jinki can’t help but move a little quickly after that, pushing you onto your back again when you start to get small, when you let yourself get wrapped around the expanse of his chest. He’s kissing down the bridge of your neck as your hands settle over his tailbone until he presses his hips down on yours and it’s so hot.

It’s so hot when you feel his cock press onto your own sex that you whimper, he watches your eyes get cloudy, like they had been before, but there’s something more there, a level of comfort that makes his cheeks feel warm, that makes his neck a bit hotter. Sex had never made him feel fluffy before and he doesn’t think he minds.

“Lift up,” he taps the palm of his hand on your hips and you obey, watching him slide the cushion he’d dragged in here under you to make things easier on him. You accommodate yourself while he browses around the tiny space of mess you’ve both made, eventually fishing around his jeans back pocket to pull out a familiar square of shiny aluminium.

You watch all too gratuitously as he rises to his knees while he peels the condom open, tempted to reach out to touch him but refraining. He knows you know he makes a show out of it all to tease you, it’s obvious in the way he spreads the precum at the tip of his cock before sliding the slippery latex down his length. He looks you straight in the eyes as he pumps himself after it’s on, almost waiting for the whine at the base of your throat.

But instead he feels your knees brush up his torso, till your legs are loosely hooked around his hips. And he lines himself up against you before leaning forward and actually giggles when one of your hands lifts to cup his cheek.

Your eyes dart between his own for a moment, your lower lip caught between your teeth as your thumb caresses the line of his cheekbone.

That’s when he knows that this is different. This isn’t how he has felt with other people, this isn’t how he’s ever felt with another person ever, ever. But it is what he’s always wanted to feel, this is the one thing he thinks he’s always looked for in someone, always wanted from a moment like this and it’s out of place and not, it’s so so pure that it almost feels illegal and he can’t help it, he can’t help kissing the inside of the hand on his cheek because it’s the only thing he can think about, this is it.

Jinki kisses you full on the mouth again, swallows the moan that sneaks up your throat as he pushes into you, slow and steady and with full force and it feels  _so good_. So whole. His tongue runs past your lower lip before he raises his head to let you breathe, to let himself breathe, and none of you have your eyes open but he can see you in the way you feel, and you feel beautiful. He’s always hated restraints but he loves the way you contain him in body, in spirit, with your words and with your hands and with the wholeness of you.

You’re the first to move, a slow buck into him that makes him push the bridge of his nose against your own, makes him grunt. He hurts and he doesn’t, this pressure is new and different and you just want to feel more, see more, hear more, touch more if only he’d let you.

“Am I making you impatient?” he groans against the corner of your lips and you smile, pushing and pulling your hips against his own again instead of answering, and in response, he lifts off of you and holds your thighs till he can push them up closer to you.

He’s on his knees again, hands now on your hips, and he starts to slide you in and out of him and it is agonising and fucking incredible and way too slow. But it becomes quick almost too soon, you barely have any time to adjust before he’s pushing you in and pushing himself in, further into parts of you that make you rawer, less pure, less inhibited. You rise to rest your body on your elbows again, spreading your knees wider, but he presses his arms against your knees to keep them against his body before he moves harder, settling on this pace for now.

“F- _fuck_ ,” it’s barely even words, the air that slips past your lips; it’s like your vocal chords shut down in the time that it takes for you to get used to the feeling of fullness in you, in the almost too sleek movement in and out of you, and it’s not just that. It’s the slapping of skin on skin, slick with sweat and languid, it’s the way he breathes, hard through his nose and equally loud out his mouth. It’s also the way he looks, glistening and gold against the candlelight, dark eyes shining almost as bright as his hair and you wish you could just close your eyes and focus on this pleasure but you can’t.

“Doesn’t that feel good?” even the sound of his voice is too much, still laced with temptation and connivery, and he watches with absolute glee as your eyes darken and meet his own. But you only nod, arms extending so you can touch him. He notices and lets go of one of your hipbones to hold your hand, squeezing when you mewl.

“You’re so good, you’re so, so good for me,” he lets himself watch as you bounce beneath him, and it makes him want to slow down it makes him wish he was in his own bed so he could lean his whole body onto yours and feel every inch of your skin. He wishes he could tell you how badly he wants to suck bruises all over your chest, on the space right between your breasts, on the skin under them. For a moment, he wants to lift you and press you against the door again, to thrust up into you until you scream, but the way you start to clamp around him makes him impatient, makes him want to be selfish and enjoy the sight of you so completely subdued and yet, so powerful.

So he smiles, and the hand that holds yours moves toward your sex. You can’t believe how quickly your body starts to climb up that peak again, how little it takes for your body to start moving against Jinki’s on its own again, chasing after pleasure like you’ve never felt it before. And then Jinki releases your hand, resting just under your belly button, and his eyes darken the tiniest bit when you raise your own to meet them.

“I wish you could see how beautiful you look right now,” he says, eyes still drowned in debauchery but also with awe and you almost feel bashful because you could say the same thing about him. But your youth gets in the way, your pride gives it a helping hand, and all you can do is flex your lower body, buck your hips against his touch and take your free hand to squeeze one of your breasts.

Jinki bites on his lip at the sight, his middle finger moving to tease your clit before you start to pant, before your pupils start to dilate. Your hand reaches out to grab his wrist but you make no attempt to make his movement stop, especially when his cock starts to slide in and out of you painfully slowly, to the point where your eyes start to burn.

He hisses when he feels the clamp around him tighten, unconsciously starting to move faster because he’s getting so fucking close, he won’t be able to go much longer because you look so hot, you feel so hot, he’s never wanted to say so much to someone but fuck, he loves this, he loves everything about you and him right now, he loves—

So his touch quickens on your clit, too, he watches you struggle to reach out to touch him and he, too, wishes his hands could touch every inch of you, that he could kiss you through the pleasure he can see welling your eyes. Your free hands join somewhere down this hasty line, squeezing until you’re looking each other in the eyes and bracing, heaving, reeling.

He calls your name, his voice small but full of need, so much need that you can’t help but respond to, by matching the movement of his hips with your own, by answering his call with a moan, a nod, a squeeze to his hand and a  _yes, yes, come for me,_  which you don’t hear with the pleasure building inside you but he hears it oh, so well. You watch him screw his eyes shut as he leans into you and rides out his orgasm with something strangely close to grace, but equally close to pure sin, you can barely handle the way his length starts to rub inside you and you’re forced to look away, to lean your head back when his fingers start to move on your clit again because Jinki realises he hates the thought of you not falling apart with him, hates it even more than the oversensitivity that’s already taking over him, than the soreness he feels all over his lower body from from the contraction and dilation, from resting on his knees, from pressing and keeping your bodies together.

When your second orgasm hits you, it’s overpowering. Your every nerve ending hurts and doesn’t, every inch of your skin feels raw with heat and pleasure and the kind of pain that makes you smile. And you’re smiling through the moan that escalates with how you feel, because it feels so good to have Jinki looking down at you like you’re a newborn sun, it feels so good to have his arms constricting your body, to have him slide in and out of you even when he’s feeling a kind of pain, too. As the pleasure plateaus, you watch him with a smile, panting, your eyes darting between his own and the shape of his lips. You wonder if he feels as happy as you do and a part of you wants to ask… but another part of you already knows the answer.

Jinki doesn’t slide out of you even when he’s drained of energy, the pleasure still peaking in bouts everywhere in his body. He can see your thighs shaking, your chest heaving, the beads of sweat glistening everywhere on your skin and it does such a wonderful job of relaxing him, of making him feel so satiated, exhausted in the best way, this sense of togetherness is almost addictive and he doesn’t want this to ever end.

Except it doesn’t feel quite complete yet, this feeling, so he yanks the cushion from under your hips and leans in to lie fully on top of you. He only presses against you until your arms and legs wrap around him. After that, he throws an arm around your waist and rolls you both around ‘till he slides out of you and falls on his back and you’re all over him, because his entire body is sore and he could really use like, fifteen minutes of just laying here.

The first few go by quietly, for a while his breathing and your own and the [e](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DQXj3g70UugY&t=MGVkZTk2MDQyMDY4Yjc1MzZkOTk4MWI0Y2IwMzYyMTBhODhmZmYyNCxpaU9TSDgzag%3D%3D&b=t%3AcXtpvFymmD9Dd4fNv0MUqQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhitchhikingbabeh.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161569843368%2Fbokeru-m&m=1)cho of your playlist is all you can hear even when you start to run the tips of your fingers all over Jinki’s chest just to watch goosebumps rise.

And then Jinki calls your name, and you meet his eyes to find them afraid, suddenly, to find them full of doubt.

You don’t like it one bit.

“I know this might not be the time to bring this up, but I… graduation is coming up and I don’t… ” your eyes widen because you know what this means, you know this means that he’s going to break up with you, he doesn’t want this to go any further  because he’s moving on, because his life is going to change and you won’t fit anymore, you can’t fit because how could you? How could you ever —

“I don’t want it to.”

“W-what do you mean?” your voice is shy, suddenly, so much that it terrifies him, but he gulps down the fear balling up in his throat and sits up to make it so you’re still on his lap but you can look each other in the face properly.

“I hate that we met now and not earlier,” he starts. “I hate that I have to move out of the frat house and be more than 100 meters away from you. Is that clingy? Is it weird? Can I just not graduate—  “

You interrupt him with a giggle and a kiss to the shell of his ear, and he laughs back, suddenly finding his lungs finally back in full function when you kiss him again, this time on the tip of his nose.

“You have to graduate, dummy,” you respond, and you hope to every deity that he can’t feel how hard or how fast your heart is beating against your chest because this could have gone so differently. “That way I can brag to my friends about my boyfriend, the new Gene Kelly.”

It sounds so good when you say it. The boyfriend part. And the Gene Kelly part, too, he guesses.

Which reminds him…

“Speaking of that… the producers and the director for that production have been coming to the Opera House a lot recently,” he perks right up, all doubts pushed away as if they’d never been there. He bites on his lip and gets distracted by the candlelight shining on your face, but you push his shoulder and he laughs and comes back around. “They’re joining the team for the next tour of Rock of Ages.”

Your eyes widen because you know there’s more, and he laughs when you push his shoulder again, when he stalls for a minute too long.

“They want me in.”

Your scream is muffled because you don’t actually open your mouth, instead pushing him to lie back so you can properly hug him and squeeze your very naked body around his very naked body, and he laughs and twirls his fingers in your hair until the air gets quiet, and a little bit tense again.

“So after commencement, I’m going to be in rehearsal all the time and in the summer, too, and I’ll probably have to find an apartment to move into that won’t cost me a kidney but will also impress all my friends. And my girlfriend.”

You kiss his cheek and burrow into his neck and let him just talk to you about his future, and it’s the first time he doesn’t feel like it’s choking him to think about all this. About keeping his internship over the summer so he can save up some money, about going apartment hunting together, about growing out his hair for the musical.

“Plus, if you ever want to run away from those four idiots, you can always come over, and do your work, we can cook together, we can smoke and drink and not have to share… and we can lock the doors. Whenever we want.”

“Very tempting,” you hum, and you press your ear against his chest to hear his heart beating, hear his breathing and it’s so relaxing you almost want to fall asleep.

“I know it would be easier to date another student, but… ”

“But?”

“But you’re mine.”

You look up at him and he meets your eyes and suddenly you feel like you’re going to combust. But you’re smiling, anyway. “No, you’re mine.”

“I am yours, but you’re mine, too.”

Your eyes narrow on his and he lets them fall closed, his arm cuddling you closer to him before he starts to pet your hair again and you sigh. Because just this morning you felt like you were near the finish line for a race that never was a race, that you were fighting against the threat of a time bomb that never even started ticking.

Because this, too, is just another beginning.

“All yours.”

* * *

When you finally make it out of the bathroom, your laptop’s run out of juice and all the lights are on.

There’s also a whole pizza on top of Jinki’s bed.

“Peace offering?” you muse, grabbing Jinki’s shirt from the corner of the bed and pulling it over your head as Jinki looks at the cardboard suspiciously. Then, he pulls it open, and surely enough, it’s fresh cheese pizza.

Though there’s a familiar note on the top of the box. The first three words are still the same, but the rest has been scratched off and replaced.

_Congratulations on the Sex, Pls Put A Sock On the Fkn Door Nxt Time Like Normal Ppl, U Freaks. Lov u. Also, Link Me To Dat Playlist._

“Man, I love those idiots.”

“Me, too,” you sigh and lean into him, “me, too.”


End file.
